rc^orjoi^^ 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

GIFT  OF 

GEORGE  MOREY  RICHARDSON. 

Received,  August,  1898. 
^Accession  No.  JJ3  77        Class  No. 


X 


i8p  ffiiw  Kepplter. 


BOOKS  AND  MEN.     i6mo.gilt  top,  $1.25. 
POINTS  OF  VIEW.     i6mo,  gilt  top,  $1.25. 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 
BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK. 


POINTS  OF  VIEW 


BY 


AGNES   REPPLIER 


BOSTON    AND   NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 


1892 


Copyright,  1891, 
BY  AGNES  REPPLIER. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 
Blectrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  0.  Uoughton  &  Company. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR 1 

ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS 30 

BOOKS  THAT  HAVE   HINDERED  ME  ....      64 

LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS 78 

FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT 105 

PLEASURE:  A  HERESY 136 

ESOTERIC  ECONOMY 166 

SCANDERBEG 189 

ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION 209 


"Scanderbeg"  is  reprinted  from  "  The  Catholic  World ' 
by  permission  of  the  publishers. 


fNIVERSITY 


POINTS  OF  VIEW. 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR. 

MORE  than  half  a  dozen  years  have  passed 
since  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  startled  for  once  out 
of  his  customary  light-heartedness,  asked  him- 
self, and  his  readers,  and  the  ghost  of  Charles 
Dickens  —  all  three  powerless  to  answer  — 
whether  the  dismal  seriousness  of  the  present 
day  was  going  to  last  forever ;  or  whether, 
when  the  great  wave  of  earnestness  had  rippled 
over  our  heads,  we  would  pluck  up  heart  to  be 
merry  and,  if  needs  be,  foolish  once  again. 
Not  that  mirth  and  folly  are  in  any  degree 
synonymous,  as  of  old ;  for  the  merry  fool, 
too  scarce,  alas,  even  in  the  times  when  Jacke 
of  Dover  hunted  for  him  in  the  highways,  has 
since  then  grown  to  be  rarer  than  a  phoenix. 
He  has  carried  his  cap  and  bells,  and  jests 
and  laughter,  elsewhere,  and  has  left  us  to  the 


2  POINTS  OF  VIEW. 

mercies  of  the  serious  fool,  who  is  by  no 
means  so  seductive  a  companion.  If  the  Cocque- 
cigrues  are  in  possession  of  the  land,  and  if 
they  are  tenants  exceedingly  hard  to  evict, 
it  is  because  of  the  connivance  and  encourage- 
ment they  receive  from  those  to  whom  we  in- 
nocently turn  for  help :  from  the  poets,  and 
novelists,  and  men  of  letters,  whose  plain  duty 
it  is  to  brighten  and  make  glad  our  days. 

"  It  is  obvious,"  sighs  Mr.  Birrell  deject- 
edly, "that  many  people  appear  to  like  a 
drab-colored  world,  hung  around  with  dusky 
shreds  of  philosophy ;  "  but  it  is  more  obvious 
still  that,  whether  they  like  it  or  not,  the 
drapings  grow  a  trifle  dingier  every  year,  and 
that  no  one  seems  to  have  the  courage  to  tack 
up  something  gay.  What  is  much  worse, 
even  those  bits  of  wanton  color  which  have 
rested  generations  of  weary  eyes  are  being 
rapidly  obscured  by  sombre  and  intricate 
scroll-work,  warranted  to  oppress  and  fatigue^ 
The  great  masterpieces  of  humor,  which  have 
kept  men  young  by  laughter,  are  being  tried 
in  the  courts  of  an  orthodox  morality,  and 
found  lamentably  wanting  ;  or  else,  by  way  of 
giving  them  another  chance,  they  are  being 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  3 

subjected  to  the  peine  forte  et  dure  of  mod* 
ern  analysis,  and  are  revealing  hideous  and 
melancholy  meanings  in  the  process.  I  have 
always  believed  that  Hudibras  owes  its  chilly 
treatment  at  the  hands  of  critics  —  with  the 
single  and  most  genial  exception  of  Sainte- 
Beuve  —  to  the  absolute  impossibility  of  twist- 
ing it  into  something  serious.  Strive  as  we 
may,  we  cannot  put  a  new  construction  on 
those  vigorous  old  jokes,  and  to  be  simply  and 
barefacedly  amusing  is  no  longer  considered 
a  sufficient  raison  d'etre.  It  is  the  most  sig- 
nificant token  of  our  ever-increasing  "  sense 
of  moral  responsibility  in  literature  "  that  we 
should  be  always  trying  to  graft  our  own  con- 
scientious purposes  upon  those  authors  who, 
happily  for  themselves,  lived  and  died  before 
virtue,  colliding  desperately  with  cakes  and 
ale,  had  imposed  such  depressing  obligations. 

"  Don  Quixote,"  says  Mr.  Shorthouse  with 
unctuous  gravity,  "  will  come  in  time  to  be 
recognized  as  one  of  the  saddest  books  ever 
written  ;  "  and,  if  the  critics  keep  on  expound- 
ing it  much  longer,  I  truly  fear  it  will.  It 
may  be  urged  that  Cervantes  himself  was  low 
enough  to  think  it  exceedingly  funny;  but 


4  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

then  one  advantage  of  our  new  and  keener 
insight  into  literature  is  to  prove  to  us  how 
indifferently  great  authors  understood  their 
own  masterpieces.  Shakespeare,  we  are  told, 
knew  comparatively  little  about  Hamlet,  and 
he  is  to  be  congratulated  on  his  limitations. 
Defoe  would  hardly  recognize  Eobinson  Crusoe 
as  "a  picture  of  civilization,"  having  inno- 
cently supposed  it  to  be  quite  the  reverse ; 
and  he  would  be  as  amazed  as  we  are  to  learn 
from  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  that  his  book 
contains  "  more  psychology,  more  political 
economy,  and  more  anthropology  than  are  to 
be  found  in  many  elaborate  treatises  on  these 
especial  subjects,"  —  blighting  words  which 
I  would  not  even  venture  to  quote  if  I  thought 
that  any  boy  would  chance  to  read  them,  and 
so  have  one  of  the  pleasures  of  his  young  life 
destroyed.  As  for  Don  Quixote,  which  its 
author  persisted  in  regarding  with  such  mis- 
placed levity,  it  has  passed  through  many  be- 
wildering vicissitudes.  It  has  figured  bravely 
as  a  satire  on  the  Duke  of  Lerma,  on  Charles 
V.,  on  Philip  II. ,  on  Ignatius  Loyola,  —  Cer- 
vantes was  the  most  devout  of  Catholics, — 
and  on  the  Inquisition,  which,  fortunately,  did 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  5 

not  think  so.  In  fact,  there  is  little  or  no- 
thing which  it  has  not  meant  in  its  time ;  and 
now,  having  attained  that  deep  spiritual  in- 
wardness which  we  have  been  recently  told  is 
lacking  in  poor  Goldsmith,  we  are  requested 
by  Mr.  Shorthouse  to  refrain  from  all  brutal 
laughter,  but,  with  a  shadowy  smile  and  a 
profound  seriousness,  to  attune  ourselves  to 
the  proper  state  of  receptivity.  Old-fashioned, 
coarse-minded  people  may  perhaps  ask,  "  But 
if  we  are  not  to  laugh  at  Don  Quixote,  at 
whom  are  we,  please,  to  laugh?"  —  a  ques- 
tion which  I,  for  one,  would  hardly  dare  to 
answer.  Only,  after  reading  the  following 
curious  sentence,  extracted  from  a  lately  pub- 
lished volume  of  criticism,  I  confess  to  finding 
myself  in  a  state  of  mental  perplexity,  utterly 
alien  to  mirth.  "  How  much  happier,"  its 
author  sternly  reminds  us,  "  was  poor  Don 
Quixote  in  his  energetic  career,  in  his  earnest 
redress  of  wrong,  and  in  his  ultimate  triumph 
over  self,  than  he  could  have  been  in  the  gnaw- 
ing reproach  and  spiritual  stigma  which  a 
yielding  to  weakness  never  failingly  entails  !  " 
Beyond  this  point  it  would  be  hard  to  go. 
Were  these  things  really  spoken  of  the  "  in- 


6  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

genious  gentleman "  of  La  Mancha,  or  of 
John  Howard,  or  George  Peabody,  or  per- 
haps Elizabeth  Fry,  —  or  is  there  no  longer 
such  a  thing  as  a  recognized  absurdity  in  the 
world  ? 

Another  gloomy  indication  of  the  departure 
of  humor  from  our  midst  is  the  tendency  of 
philosophical  writers  to  prove  by  analysis  that, 
if  they  are  not  familiar  with  the  thing  itself, 
they  at  least  know  of  what  it  should  consist. 
Mr,  Shorthouse's  depressing  views  about  Don 
Quixote  are  merely  introduced  as  illustrating 
a  very  scholarly  and  comfortless  paper  on  the 
subtle  qualities  of  mirth.  No  one  could  deal 
more  gracefully  and  less  humorously  with  his 
topic  than  does  Mr.  Shorthouse,  and  we  are 
compelled  to  pause  every  now  and  then  and 
reassure  ourselves  as  to  the  subject  matter  of 
his  eloquence.  Professor  Everett  has  more 
recently  and  more  cheerfully  defined  for  us 
the  Philosophy  of  the  Comic,  in  a  way  which, 
if  it  does  not  add  to  our  gayety,  cannot  be  ac- 
cused of  plunging  us  deliberately  into  gloom. 
He  thinks,  indeed,  —  and  small  wonder,  —  that 
there  is  "  a  genuine  difficulty  in  distinguish- 
ing between  the  comic  and  the  tragic,"  and 


v.  V 

UNIVERSITY 


^  \^*<v 

OP  THB 


4  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR. 

that  what  we  need  is  some  formula  which  shall 
accurately  interpret  the  precise  qualities  of 
each  ;  and  he  is  disposed  to  illustrate  his  theory 
by  dwelling  on  the  tragic  side  of  Falstaff,  which 
is,  of  all  injuries,  the  grimmest  and  hardest  to 
forgive.  Falstaff  is  now  the  forlorn  hope  of 
those  who  love  to  laugh,  and  when  he  is  taken 
away  from  us,  as  soon,  alas  !  he  will  be,  and 
sleeps  with  Don  Quixote  in  the  "  dull  cold 
marble  "  of  an  orthodox  sobriety,  how  shall  we 
make  merry  our  souls  ?  Mr.  George  Eadford, 
who  enriched  the  first  volume  of  "  Obiter 
Dicta  "  with  such  a  loving  study  of  the  fat-wit- 
ted old  knight,  tells  us  reassuringly  that  by 
laughter  man  is  distinguished  from  the  beasts, 
though  the  cares  and  sorrows  of  life  have  all 
but  deprived  him  of  this  elevating  grace,  and 
degraded  him  into  a  brutal  solemnity.  Then 
comes  along  a  rare  genius  like  Falstaff,  who 
restores  the  power  of  laughter,  and  transforms 
the  stolid  brute  once  more  into  a  man,  and 
who  accordingly  has  the  highest  claim  to  our 
grateful  and  affectionate  regard.  That  there 
are  those  who  persist  in  looking  upon  him 
as  a  selfish  and  worthless  fellow  is,  from  Mr. 
Radford's  point  of  view,  a  sorrowful  instance 


8  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

of  human  thanklessness  and  perversity.  .But 
this  I  take  to  be  the  enamored  and  exagger- 
ated language  of  a  too  faithful  partisan.  Mor- 
ally speaking,  Falstaff  has  not  a  leg  to  stand 
upon,  and  there  is  a  tragic  element  lurking 
always  amid  the  fun.  But,  seen  in  the  broad 
sunlight  of  his  transcendent  humor,  this 
shadow  is  as  the  half-pennyworth  of  bread  to 
his  own  noble  ocean  of  sack,  and  why  should 
we  be  forever  trying  to  force  it  into  promi- 
nence ?  When  Charlotte  Bronte  advised  her 
friend,  Ellen  Nussey,  to  read  none  of  Shake- 
speare's comedies,  she  was  not  beguiled  for  a 
moment  into  regarding  them  as  serious  and 
melancholy  lessons  of  life ;  but  with  uncom- 
promising directness  put  them  down  as  mere 
improper  plays,  the  amusing  qualities  of  which 
were  insufficient  to  excuse  their  coarseness, 
and  which  were  manifestly  unfit  for  the  "  gen- 
tle Ellen's  "  eyes. 

In  fact,  humor  would  at  all  times  have  been 
the  poorest  excuse  to  offer  to  Miss  Bronte 
for  any  form  of  moral  dereliction,  for  it  was 
the  one  quality  she  lacked  herself,  and  failed 
to  tolerate  in  others.  Sam  Weller  was  ap- 
parently as  obnoxious  to  her  as  was  Fal- 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  9 

staff,  for  she  would  not  even  consent  to  meet 
Dickens,  when  she  was  being  lionized  in  Lon- 
don society,  —  a  degree  of  abstemiousness 
011  her  part  which  it  is  disheartening  to  con- 
template. It  does  not  seem  too  much  to  say 
that  every  shortcoming  in  Charlotte  Bronte's 
admirable  work,  every  limitation  of  her  splen- 
did genius,  arose  primarily  from  her  want 
of  humor.  Her  severities  of  judgment  — 
and  who  more  severe  than  she  ?  —  were  due 
to  the  same  melancholy  cause  ;  for  humor 
is  the  kindliest  thing  alive.  Compare  the 
harshness  with  which  she  handles  her  hap- 
less curates,  and  the  comparative  crudity  of 
her  treatment,  with  the  surpassing  lightness 
of  Miss  Austen's  touch  as  she  rounds  and 
completes  her  immortal  clerical  portraits. 
Miss  Bronte  tells  us,  in  one  of  her  letters,  that 
she  regarded  all  curates  as  "  highly  uninter- 
esting, narrow,  and  unattractive  specimens  of 
the  coarser  sex,"  just  as  she  found  all  the 
Belgian  school-girls  "  cold,  selfish,  animal,  and 
inferior."  But  to  Miss  Austen's  keen  and 
friendly  eye  the  narrowest  of  clergymen  was 
not  wholly  uninteresting,  the  most  inferior  of 
school-girls  not  without  some  claim  to  our  con- 


10  POINTS  OF  VIEW. 

sideration ;  even  the  coarseness  of  the  male 
sex  was  far  from  vexing  her  maidenly  seren- 
ity, probably  because  she  was  unacquainted 
with  the  Rochester  type.  Mr.  Elton  is  cer- 
tainly narrow,  Mary  Bennet  extremely  infe- 
rior ;  but  their  authoress  only  laughs  at  them 
softly,  with  a  quiet  tolerance,  and  a  good- 
natured  sense  of  amusement  at  their  follies. 
It  was  little  wonder  that  Charlotte  Bronte, 
who  had  at  all  times  the  courage  of  her  con- 
victions, could  not,  and  would  not,  read  Jane 
Austen's  novels.  "  They  have  not  got  story 
enough  for  me,"  she  boldly  affirmed.  "  I 
don't  want  my  blood  curdled,  but  I  like  to 
have  it  stirred.  Miss  Austen  strikes  me  as 
milk-and- watery,  and,  to  say  truth,  as  dull." 
Of  course  she  did !  How  was  a  woman,  whose 
ideas  of  after-dinner  conversation  are  embod- 
ied in  the  amazing  language  of  Baroness  In- 
gram and  her  titled  friends,  to  appreciate  the 
delicious,  sleepy  small  talk,  in  "Sense  and  Sen- 
sibility," about  the  respective  heights  of  the  re- 
spective grandchildren  ?  It  is  to  Miss  Bronte's 
abiding  lack  of  humor  that  we  owe  such 
stately  caricatures  as  Blanche  Ingram,  and  all 
the  high-born,  ill-bred  company  who  gather 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  11 

in  Tliornfield  Hall,  like  a  group  fresh  from 
Madame  Tussaud's  ingenious  workshop,  and 
against  whose  waxen  unreality  Jane  Eyre  and 
Rochester,  alive  to  their  very  finger-tips,  con- 
trast like  twin  sparks  of  fire.  It  was  her  lack 
of  humor,  too,  which  beguiled  her  into  as- 
serting that  the  forty  "  wicked,  sophistical, 
and  immoral  French  novels,"  which  found 
their  way  down  to  lonely  Haworth,  gave  her 
"  a  thorough  idea  of  France  and  Paris,"  —  alas, 
poor  misjudged  France  !  —  and  which  made 
her  think  Thackeray  very  nearly  as  wicked, 
sophistical,  and  immoral  as  the  French  novels. 
Even  her  dislike  for  children  was  probably 
due  to  the  same  irremediable  misfortune ;  for 
the  humors  of  children  are  the  only  redeem- 
ing points  amid  their  general  naughtiness,  and 
vexing  misbehavior.  Mr.  Swinburne,  guilt- 
less himself  of  any  jocose  tendencies,  has  made 
the  unique  discovery  that  Charlotte  Bronte 
strongly  resembles  Cervantes,  and  that  Paul 
Emanuel  is  a  modern  counterpart  of  Don 
Quixote  ;  and  well  it  is  for  our  poet  that  the 
irascible  little  professor  never  heard  him  hint 
^it  such  a  similarity.  Surely,  to  use  one  of 
Mr.  Swinburne's  own  incomparable  expres- 


12  POINTS  OF  VIEW. 

sions,  the  parallel  is  no  better  than  a  "  sub- 
simious  absurdity." 

On  the  other  hand,  we  are  told  that  Miss 
Austen  owed  her  lively  sense  of  humor  to  her 
habit  of  dissociating  the  follies  of  mankind 
from  any  rigid  standard  of  right  and  wrong ; 
which  means,  I  suppose,  that  she  never 
dreamed  she  had  a  mission.  Nowadays,  in- 
deed, no  writer  is  without  one.  We  cannot 
even  read  a  paper  upon  gypsies,  and  not  be- 
come aware  that  its  author  is  deeply  imbued 
with  a  sense  of  his  personal  responsibility 
for  these  agreeable  rascals,  whom  he  insists 
upon  our  taking  seriously,  —  as  if  we  wanted 
to  have  anything  to  do  with  them  on  such 
terms  !  "  Since  the  time  of  Carlyle,"  says  Mr. 
Bagehot,  "  earnestness  has  been  a  favorite 
virtue  in  literature ; "  but  Carlyle,  though 
sharing  largely  in  that  profound  melancholy 
which  he  declared  to  be  the  basis  of  every 
English  soul,  and  though  he  was  unfortunate 
enough  to  think  Pickwick  sad  trash,  had  nev- 
ertheless a  grim  and  eloquent  humor  of  his 
own.  With  him,  at  least,  earnestness  never 
degenerated  into  dullness  ;  and  while  dullness^ 
may  be,  as  he  unhesitatingly  affirmed,  the  s 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  13 

first  requisite  for  a  great  and  free  people,  yet 
a  too  heavy  percentage  of  this  valuable  quality 
is  fatal  to  the  sprightly  grace  of  literature. 
"  In  our  times,"  said  an  old  Scotchwoman, 
"  there  's  fully  mony  modern  principles,"  and 
the  first  of  these  seems  to  be  the  substitution 
of  a  serious  and  critical  discernment  for  the 
light-hearted  sympathy  of  former  days.  Our 
grandfathers  cried  a  little  and  laughed  a  good 
deal  over  their  books,  without  the  smallest 
sense  of  anxiety  or  responsibility  in  the  mat- 
ter ;  but  we  are  called  on  repeatedly  to  face 
problems  which  we  would  rather  let  alone,  to 
dive  dismally  into  motives,  to  trace  subtle  con- 
nections, to  analyze  uncomfortable  sensations, 
and  to  exercise  in  all  cases  a  discreet  and  con- 
scientious severity,  when  what  we  really  want 
and  need  is  half  an  hour's  amusement.  There 
is  no  stronger  proof  of  the  great  change  that 
has  swept  over  mankind  than  the  sight  of  a 
nation  which  used  to  chuckle  over  "  Tom 
Jones  "  absorbing  a  few  years  ago  countless 
editions  of  "  Robert  Elsmere."  What  is  droller 
still  is  that  the  people  who  read  "  Robert  Els- 
inere  "  would  think  it  wrong  to  enjoy  "  Tom 
Jones,"  and  that  the  people  who  enjoyed  "Tom 


14  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

Jones  "  would  have  thought  it  wrong  to  read 
"  Robert  Elsmere ; "  and  that  the  people  who, 
wishing  to  be  on  the  safe  side  of  virtue,  think 
it  wrong  to  read  either,  are  scorned  greatly  as 
lacking  true  moral  discrimination. 

Now  he  would  be  a  brave  man  who  would 
undertake  to  defend  the  utterly  indefensible 
literature  of  the  past.  Where  it  was  most 
humorous  it  was  also  most  coarse,  wanton,  and 
cruel ;  but,  in  banishing  these  objectionable 
qualities,  we  have  effectually  contrived  to  rid 
ourselves  of  the  humor  as  well,  and  with  it  we 
have  lost  one  of  the  safest  instincts  of  our 
souls.  Any  book  which  serves  to  lower  the 
sum  of  human  gayety  is  a  moral  delinquent ; 
and  instead  of  coddling  it  into  universal  no- 
tice, and  growing  owlish  in  its  gloom,  we 
should  put  it  briskly  aside  in  favor  of  brighter 
and  pleasanter  things.  When  Father  Faber 
said  that  there  was  no  greater  help  to  a  reli- 
gious life  than  a  keen  sense  of  the  ridiculous, 
he  startled  a  number  of  pious  people,  yet  what 
a  luminous  and  cordial  message  it  was  to  help 
us  on  our  way !  Mr.  Birrell  has  recorded  the 
extraordinary  delight  with  which  he  came 
across  some  after-dinner  sally  of  the  Eev. 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  15 

Henry  Martyn's ;  for  the  very  thought  of  that 
ardent  and  fiery  spirit  relaxing  into  pleasant- 
ries over  the  nuts  and  wine  made  him  appear 
like  an  actual  fellow-being  of  our  own.  It  is 
with  the  same  feeling  intensified,  as  I  have 
already  noted,  that  we  read  some  of  the  letters 
of  the  early  fathers,  —  those  grave  and  hal- 
lowed figures  seen  through  a  mist  of  centuries, 
—  and  find  them  jesting  at  one  another  in  the 
gayest  and  least  sacerdotal  manner  imaginable. 
"  Who  could  tell  a  story  with  more  wit,  who 
could  joke  so  pleasantly  ?  "  sighs  St.  Gregory  of 
Nazienzen  of  his  friend  St.  Basil,  remember- 
ing doubtless  with  a  heavy  heart  the  shafts 
of  good-humored  raillery  that  had  brightened 
their  lifelong  intercourse.  With  what  kindly 
and  loving  zest  does  Gregory,  himself  the  most 
austere  of  men,  mock  at  Basil's  asceticism,  — 
at  those  "  sad  and  hungry  banquets  "  of  which 
he  was  invited  to  partake,  those  "  ungarden- 
like  gardens,  void  of  pot-herbs,"  in  which  he 
was  expected  to  dig  !  With  what  delightful 
alacrity  does  Basil  vindicate  his  reputation  for 
humor  by  making  a  most  excellent  joke  in 
court,  for  the  benefit  of  a  brutal  magistrate 
who  fiercely  threatened  to  tear  out  his  liver  1 


16  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

"  Your  intention  is  a  benevolent  one,"  said  the 
saint,  who  had  been  for  years  a  confirmed  in- 
valid. "  Where  it  is  now  located,  it  has  given 
me  nothing  but  trouble."  Surely,  as  we  read 
such  an  anecdote  as  this,  we  share  in  the 
curious  sensation  experienced  by  little  Tom 
Tulliver,  when,  by  dint  of  Maggie's  repeated 
questions,  he  began  slowly  to  understand  that 
the  Romans  had  once  been  real  men,  who  were 
happy  enough  to  speak  their  own  language 
without  any  previous  introduction  to  the  Eton 
grammar.  In  like  manner,  when  we  come  to 
realize  that  the  fathers  of  the  primitive  Church 
enjoyed  their  quips  and  cranks  and  jests  as 
much  as  do  Mr.  Trollope's  jolly  deans  or 
vicars,  we  feel  we  have  at  last  grasped  the  se- 
cret of  their  identity,  and  we  appreciate  the 
force  of  Father  Faber's  appeal  to  the  frank 
spirit  of  a  wholesome  mirth. 

Perhaps  one  reason  for  the  scanty  tolerance 
that  humor  receives  at  the  hands  of  the  disaf- 
fected is  because  of  the  rather  selfish  way  in 
which  the  initiated  enjoy  their  fun  ;  for  there 
is  always  a  secret  irritation  about  a  laugh  in 
which  we  cannot  join.  Mr.  George  Saints- 
bury  is  plainly  of  this  way  of  thinking,  and, 


A  PLEA   FOR  HUMOR.  17 

being  blessed  beyond  his  fellows  with  a  love 
for  all  that  is  jovial,  he  speaks  from  out  of  the 
richness  of  his  experience.  "  Those  who  have 
a  sense  of  humor,"  he  says,  "  instead  of  being 
quietly  and  humbly  thankful,  are  perhaps  a 
little  too  apt  to  celebrate  their  joy  in  the  face 
of  the  afflicted  ones  who  have  it  not ;  and  the 
afflicted  ones  only  follow  a  general  law  in  pro- 
testing that  it  is  a  very  worthless  thing,  if  not 
a  complete  humbug."  This  spirit  of  exclu- 
siveness  on  the  one  side  and  of  irascibility  on 
the  other  may  be  greatly  deplored,  but  who  is 
there  among  us,  I  wonder,  wholly  innocent  of 
blame  ?  Mr.  Saintsbury  himself  confesses  to 
a  silent  chuckle  of  delight  when  he  thinks  of 
the  dimly  veiled  censoriousness  with  which 
Peacock's  inimitable  humor  has  been  received 
by  one  half  of  the  reading  world.  In  other 
words,  his  enjoyment  of  the  Rev.  Drs.  Folli- 
ott  and  Opimian  is  sensibly  increased  by  the 
reflection  that  a  great  many  worthy  people, 
even  among  his  own  acquaintances,  are,  by 
some  mysterious  law  of  their  being,  debarred 
from  any  share  in  his  pleasure.  Yet  surely 
we  need  not  be  so  niggardly  in  this  matter. 
There  is  wit  enough  in  those  two  reverend 


18  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

gentlemen  to  go  all  around  the  living  earth, 
and  leave  plenty  for  generations  now  unborn. 
Each  might  say  with  Juliet,  — 

"  The  more  I  give  to  thee, 
The  more  I  have ;  " 

for  wit  is  as  infinite  as  love,  and  a  deal  more 
lasting  in  its  qualities.  When  Peacock  de- 
scribes a  country  gentleman's  range  of  ideas 
as  "nearly  commensurate  with  that  of  the 
great  king  Nebuchadnezzar  when  he  was 
turned  out  to  grass,"  he  affords  us  a  happy 
illustration  of  the  eternal  fitness  of  humor, 
for  there  can  hardly  come  a  time  when  such 
an  apt  comparison  will  fail  to  point  its  mean- 
ing. 

Mr.  Birrell  is  quite  as  selfish  in  his  felicity 
as  Mr.  Saintsbury,  and  perfectly  frank  in  ac- 
knowledging it.  He  dwells  rapturously  over 
certain  well -loved  pages  of  "  Pride  and  Preju- 
dice," and  "  Mansfield  Park,"  and  then  de- 
liberately adds,  "  When  an  admirer  of  Miss 
Austen  reads  these  familiar  passages,  the  smile 
of  satisfaction,  betraying  the  deep  inward  peace 
they  never  fail  to  beget,  widens,  like  '  a  circle 
in  the  water,'  as  he  remembers  (and  he  is  al- 
ways careful  to  remember)  how  his  dearest 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  19 

friend,  who  has  been  so  successful  in  life,  can 
no  more  read  Miss  Austen  than  he  can  read 
the  Moabitish  Stone."  The  same  peculiarity 
is  noticeable  in  the  more  ardent  lovers  of 
Charles  Lamb.  They  seem  to  want  him  all 
to  themselves,  look  askance  upon  any  fellow- 
being  who  ventures  to  assert  a  modest  prefer- 
ence for  their  ido]9  and  brighten  visibly  when 
some  ponderous  critic  declares  the  Letters  to 
be  sad  stuff,  and  not  worth  half  the  exasperat- 
ing nonsense  talked  about  them.  Yet  Lamb 
flung  his  good  things  to  the  winds  with  charac- 
teristic prodigality,  little  recking  by  whom  or 
in  what  spirit  they  were  received.  How  many 
witticisms,  I  wonder,  were  roared  into  the  deaf 
ears  of  old  Thomas  Westwood,  who  heard 
them  not,  alas,  but  who  laughed  all  the  same, 
out  of  pure  sociability,  and  with  a  pleasant 
sense  that  something  funny  had  been  said! 
And  what  of  that  ill-fated  pun  which  Lamb, 
in  a  moment  of  deplorable  abstraction,  let  fall 
at  a  funeral,  to  the  surprise  and  consternation 
of  the  mourners  ?  Surely  a  man  who  could 
joke  at  a  funeral  never  meant  his  pleasantries 
to  be  hoarded  up  for  the  benefit  of  an  initiated 
few,  but  would  gladly  see  them  the  property 


20  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

of  all  living  men;  ay,  and  of  all  dead  men, 
too,  were  such  a  distribution  possible.  "  Damn 
the  age !  I  will  write  for  antiquity !  "  he  ex- 
claimed, with  not  unnatural  heat,  when  the 
"  Gypsy's  Malison  "  was  rejected  by  the  in- 
genious editors  of  the  "  Gem,"  on  the  ground 
that  it  would  "  shock  all  mothers  ;  "  and  even 
this  expression,  uttered  with  pardonable  irrita- 
tion, manifests  no  solicitude  for  a  narrow  and 
esoteric  audience. 

"  Wit  is  useful  for  everything,  but  sufficient 
for  nothing,"  says  Amiel,  who  probably  felt 
he  needed  some  excuse  for  burying  so  much 
of  his  Gallic  sprightliness  in  Teutonic  gloom ; 
and  dullness,  it  must  be  admitted,  has  the 
distinct  advantage  of  being  useful  for  every- 
body, and  sufficient  for  nearly  everybody  as 
well.  Nothing,  we  are  told,  is  more  rational 
than  ennui  ;  and  Mr.  Bagehot,  contemplating 
the  "grave  files  of  speechless  men  "  who  have 
always  represented  the  English  land,  exults 
more  openly  and  energetically  even  than  Car- 
lyle  in  the  saving  dullness,  the  superb  impene- 
trability, which  stamps  the  Englishman,  as  it 
stamped  the  Roman,  with  the  sign-manual  of 
patient  strength.  Stupidity,  he  reminds  us, 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  21 

is  not  folly,  and  moreover  it  often  insures  a 
valuable  consistency.  "  '  What  I  says  is  this 
here,  as  I  was  a-saying  yesterday,'  is  the  av- 
erage Englishman's  notion  of  historical  elo- 
quence and  habitual  discretion."  But  Mr. 
Bagehot  could  well  afford  to  trifle  thus  coyly 
with  dullness,  because  he  knew  it  only  theo- 
retically and  as  a  dispassionate  observer.  His 
own  roof-tree  is  free  from  the  blighting  pres- 
ence ;  his  own  pages  are  guiltless  of  the  leaden 
touch.  It  has  been  well  said  that  an  ordinary 
mortal  might  live  for  a  twelvemonth  like  a 
gentleman  on  Hazlitt's  ideas ;  but  he  might,  if 
he  were  clever,  shine  all  his  life  long  with  the 
reflected  splendor  of  Mr.  Bagehot's  wit,  and 
be  thought  to  give  forth  a  very  respectable 
illumination.  There  is  a  telling  quality  in 
every  stroke ;  a  pitiless  dexterity  that  drives 
the  weapon,  like  a  fairy's  arrow,  straight  to 
some  vital  point.  When  we  read  that  "  of  all 
pursuits  ever  invented  by  man  for  separating 
the  faculty  of  argument  from  the  capacity  of 
belief,  the  art  of  debating  is  probably  the 
most  effective,"  we  feel  that  an  unwelcome 
statement  has  been  expressed  with  Mephisto- 
phelian  coolness ;  and  remembering  that  these 


22  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

words  were  uttered  before  Mr.  Gladstone  had 
attained  his  parliamentary  preeminence,  we 
have  but  another  proof  of  the  imperishable 
accuracy  of  wit.  Only  say  a  clever  thing-,  and 
mankind  will  go  on  forever  furnishing  living 
illustrations  of  its  truth.  .It  was  Thurlow  who 
originally  remarked  that  "  companies  have  nei- 
ther bodies  to  kick  nor  souls  to  lose,"  and  the 
jest  fits  in  so  aptly  with  our  every-day  humors 
and  experiences  that  I  have  heard  men  attrib- 
ute it  casually  to  their  friends,  thinking,  per- 
haps, that  it  must  have  been  born  in  these 
times  of  giant  corporations,  of  city  railroads, 
and  of  trusts.  What  a  gap  between  Queen 
Victoria  and  Queen  Bess,  what  a  thorough  and 
far-reaching  change  in  everything  that  goes  to 
make  up  the  life  and  habits  of  men ;  and  yet 
Shakespeare's  fine  strokes  of  humor  have  be- 
come so  fitted  to  our  common  speech  that  the 
very  unconsciousness  with  which  we  apply 
them  proves  how  they  tally  with  our  modern 
emotions  and  opportunities.  Lesser,  lights 
burn  quite  as  steadily.  Pope  and  Goldsmith 
reappear  on  the  lips  of  people  whose  know- 
ledge of  the  "  Essay  on  Man  "  is  of  the  very 
haziest  character,  and  whose  acquaintance  with 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  23 

"She  Stoops  to  Conquer"  is  confined  exclu- 
sively to  Mr.  Abbey's  graceful  illustrations. 
Not  very  long  ago  I  heard  a  bright  school-girl, 
when  reproached  for  wet  feet  or  some  such 
youthful  indiscretion,  excuse  herself  gayly 
on  the  plea  that  she  was  "  bullying  Nature  ;  " 
and,  knowing  that  the  child  was  but  modestly 
addicted  to  her  books,  I  wondered  how  many 
of  Dr.  Holmes's  trenchant  sayings  have  be- 
come a  heritage  in  our  households,  detached 
often  from  their  original  kinship,  and  seem- 
ing like  the  rightful  property  of  every  one 
who  utters  them.  I  It  is  an  amusing,  barefaced, 
witless  sort  of  robbery,  yet  surely  not  without 
its  compensations ;  for  it  must  be  a  pleasant 
thing  to  reflect  in  old  age  that  the  general 
murkiness  of  life  has  been  lit  up  here  and 
there  by  sparks  struck  from  one's  youthful 
fire,  and  that  these  sparks,  though  they  wan- 
der occasionally  masterless  as  will-o'vthe-wisps, 
are  destined  never  to  go  out.l 

Are  destined  never  to  go  out !  In  its  vital- 
ity lies  the  supreme  excellence  of  humor. 
Whatever  has  "  wit  enough  to  keep  it  sweet " 
defies  corruption  and  outlasts  all  time ;  but 
the  wit  must  be  of  that  outward  and  visible 


OF  THB 
TT  "KT  TTT  IT1  TD  £3  T  TI"V 


24  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

order  which  needs  no  introduction  or  demon- 
stration at  our  hands.  It  is  an  old  trick  with 
dull  novelists  to  describe  their  characters  as 
being  exceptionally  brilliant  people,  and  to 
trust  that  we  will  take  their  word  for  it,  and 
ask  no  further  proof.  Every  one  remembers 
how  Lord  Beaconsfield  would  tell  us  that  a 
cardinal  could  "  sparkle  with  anecdote  and 
blaze  with  repartee  ;  "  and  how  utterly  desti- 
tute of  sparkle  or  blaze  were  the  specimens 
of  his  eminence's  conversation  with  which  we 
were  subsequently  favored.  Those  "  lively 
dinners  "  in  "  Endymion  "  and  "  Lothair,"  at 
which  we  were  assured  the  brightest  minds  in 
England  loved  to  gather,  became  mere  Barme- 
cide feasts  when  reported  to  us  without  a  sin- 
gle amusing  remark ;  such  waifs  and  strays  of 
conversation  as  reached  oar  ears  being  of  the 
dreariest  and  most  fatuous  description.  It  is 
not  so  with  the  real  masters  of  their  craft. 
Mr.  Peacock  does  not  stop  to  explain  to  us 
that  Dr.  Folliott  is  witty.  The  reverend  gen- 
tleman opens  his  mouth  and  acquaints  us  with 
the  fact  himself.  There  is  no  need  for  George 
Eliot  to  expatiate  on  Mrs.  Poyser's  humor. 
Five  minutes  of  that  lady's  society  is  amply 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  25 

sufficient  for  the  revelation.  We  do  not  even 
hear  Mr.  Poyser  and  the  rest  of  the  family  en- 
larging delightedly  on  the  subject,  as  do  all 
of  Lawyer  Putney's  friends,  in  Mr.  Howells's 
story,  "  Annie  Kilburn ;  "  and  yet  even  the 
united  testimony  of  Hatboro'  fails  to  clear  up 
our  lingering  doubts  concerning  Mr.  Putney's 
wit.  The  dull  people  of  that  soporific  town  are 
really  and  truly  and  realistically  dull.  There 
is  no  mistaking  them.  The  stamp  of  veracity 
is  upon  every  brow.  They  pay  morning  calls, 
and  we  listen  to  their  conversation  with  a 
dreamy  impression  that  we  have  heard  it  all 
many  times  before,  and  that  the  ghosts  of  our 
own  morning  calls  are  revisiting  us,  not  in  the 
glimpses  of  the  moon,  but  in  Mr.  Howells's  deco- 
rous and  quiet  pages.  That  curious  conviction 
that  we  have  formerly  passed  through  a  pre- 
cisely similar  experience  is  strong  upon  us  as 
we  read,  and  it  is  the  most  emphatic  testimony 
to  the  novelist's  peculiar  skill.  But  there  is 
none  of  this  instantaneous  acquiescence  in  Mr. 
Putney's  wit ;  for  although  he  does  make  one 
very  nice  little  joke,  it  is  hardly  enough  to  fla- 
vor all  his  conversation,  which  is  for  the  most 
part  rather  unwholesome  than  humorous.  The 


26  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

only  way  to  elucidate  him  is  to  suppose  that 
Mr.  Howells,  in  sardonic  mood,  wishes  to  show 
us  that  if  a  man  be  discreet  enough  to  take  to 
hard  drinking  in  his  youth,  before  his  general 
emptiness  is  ascertained,  his  friends  invariably 
credit  him  with  a  host  of  shining  qualities 
which,  we  are  given  to  understand,  lie  balked 
and  frustrated  by  his  one  unfortunate  weak- 
ness. How  many  of  us  know  these  exception- 
ally brilliant  lawyers,  doctors,  politicians,  and 
journalists,  who  bear  a  charmed  reputation, 
based  exclusively  upon  their  inebriety,  and 
who  take  good  care  not  to  imperil  it  by  too 
long  a  relapse  into  the  mortifying  self-revela- 
tions of  soberness  !  And  what  wrong  has  been 
done  to  the  honored  name  of  humor  by  these 
pretentious  rascals  !  We  do  not  love  Falstaff 
because  he  is  drunk ;  we  do  not  admire  Becky 
Sharp  because  she  is  wicked.  Drunkenness 
and  wickedness  are  things  easy  of  imitation  ; 
yet  all  the  sack  in  Christendom  could  not  be- 
get us  another  Falstaff,  —  though  Seithenyn 
ap  Seithyn  comes  very  near  to  the  incompar- 
able model,  —  and  all  the  wickedness  in  the 
world  could  not  fashion  us  a  second  Becky 
Sharp.  There  are  too  many  dull  topers  and 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  27 

stupid   sinners   among   mankind   to  admit  of 
any  uncertainty  on  those  points. 

Bishop  Burnet,  in  describing  Lord  Halifax, 
tells  us,  with  thinly  veiled  disapprobation,  that 
he  was  "  a  man  of  fine  and  ready  wit,  full  of 
life,  and  very  pleasant,  but  much  turned  to 
satire.  His  imagination  was  too  hard  for  his 
judgment,  and  a  severe  jest  took  more  with 
him  than  all  arguments  whatever."  Yet  this 
was  the  first  statesman  of  his  age,  and  one 
whose  clear  and  tranquil  vision  penetrated 
so  far  beyond  the  turbulent,  troubled  times 
he  lived  in,  that  men  looked  askance  upon  a 
power  they  but  dimly  understood.  The  sturdy 
"  Trimmer,'7  who  would  be  bullied  neither 
by  king  nor  commons,  who  would  "  speak  his 
mind  and  not  be  hanged  as  long  as  there  was 
law  in  England,"  must  have  turned  with  in- 
finite relief  from  the  horrible  medley  of  plots 
and  counterplots,  from  the  ugly  images  of 
Gates  and  Dangerfield,  from  the  scaffolds  of 
Stafford  and  Russell  and  Sidney,  from  the 
Bloody  Circuit  and  the  massacre  of  Glencoe, 
from  the  false  smiles  of  princes  and  the  howl- 
ing arrogance  of  the  mob,  to  any  jest,  how- 
ever "severe,"  which  would  restore  to  him 


28  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

his  cold  and  fastidious  serenity,  and  keep  his 
judgment  and  his  good  temper  unimpaired. 
"  Ridicule  is  the  test  of  truth,"  said  Hazlitt, 
and  it  is  a  test  which  Halifax  remorselessly 
applied,  and  which  would  not  be  without  its 
uses  to  the  Trimmer  of  to-day,  in  whom  this 
adjusting  sense  is  lamentably  lacking.  For 
humor  distorts  nothing,  and  only  false  gods 
are  laughed  off  their  earthly  pedestals.  What 
monstrous  absurdities  and  paradoxes  have  re- 
sisted whole  batteries  of  serious  arguments, 
and  then  crumbled  swiftly  into  dust  before 
the  ringing  death-knell  of  a  laugh  !  What 
healthy  exultation,  what  genial  warmth,  what 
loyal  brotherhood  of  mirth,  attends  the  friendly 
sound  !  Yet  in  labeling  our  life  and  litera- 
ture, as  the  Danes  labeled  their  Royal  Theatre 
in  Copenhagen,  "  Not  for  amusement  merely," 
we  have  pushed  one  step  further,  and  the 
legend  too  often  stands,  "  Not  for  amusement 
at  all."  Life  is  no  laughing  matter,  we  are 
told,  which  is  true ;  and,  what  is  still  more 
dismal  to  contemplate,  books  are  no  laughing 
matters,  either.  Only  now  and  then  some  gay, 
defiant  rebel,  like  Mr.  Saintsbury,  flaunts  the 
old  flag,  hums  a  bar  of  "  Blue  Bonnets  over 


A  PLEA  FOR  HUMOR.  29 

the  Border,"  and  ruffles  the  quiet  waters  of  our 
souls  by  hinting  that  this  age  of  Apollinaris 
and  of  lectures  is  at  fault,  and  that  it  has 
produced  nothing  which  can  vie  as  literature 
with  the  products  of  the  ages  of  wine  and 
song. 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS. 

IN  a  fair  and  far-off  country,  hidden  to 
none,  though  visited  by  few,  dwell  a  little 
band  of  lovely  ladies,  to  whose  youth  and  ra- 
diance the  poets  have  added  the  crowning  gift 
of  immortality.  There  they  live,  with  faint 
alluring  smiles  that  never  fade  ;  and  at  their 
head  is  Helen  of  Troy,  white-bosomed,  azure- 
eyed,  to  whom  men  forgave  all  things  for  her 
beauty's  sake.  There,  too,  is  Lesbia,  fair  and 
false,  laughing  at  a  broken  heart,  but  hold- 
ing close  and  tenderly  the  dead  sparrow 

"  That,  living,  never  strayed  from  her  sweet  breast." 

She  kisses  its  ruffled  wings  and  weeps,  she 
who  had  no  tears  to  spare  when  Catullus  sung 
and  sued.  And  there  is  Myrto,  beloved  by 
Theocritus,  her  naked  feet  gleaming  like 
pearls,  a  bunch  of  Coaii  rushes  pressed  in 
her  rosy  fingers  ;  and  the  nameless  girl  who 
held  in  check  Anacreon's  wandering  heart 
with  the  magic  of  dimples,  and  parted  lips, 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  31 

and  thin  purple  floating  garments.  With  these 
are  later  beauties :  Fiammetta  the  ruddy- 
haired,  whom  death  snatched  from  Boccaccio's 
arms,  and  the  gentle  Catarina,  raising  those 
heavy-lidded  eyes  that  Camoens  loved  and 
lost ;  Petrarch's  Laura,  robed  in  pale  green 
spotted  with  violets,  one  golden  curl  escaping 
wantonly  beneath  her  veil ;  the  fair  blue-stock- 
ing, Leonora  d'Este,  pale  as  a  rain-washed 
rose,  her  dress  in  sweet  disorder ;  and  Bea- 
trice, with  the  stillness  of  eternity  in  her 
brooding  eyes.  If  we  listen,  we  hear  the  shrill 
laughter  of  Mignonne,  a  child  of  fifteen  sum- 
mers, mocking  at  Ronsard's  wooing;  or  we 
catch  the  gentler  murmur  of  Highland  Mary's 
song.  She  blushes  a  little,  the  low-born 
lass,  and  sinks  her  graceful  head,  as  though 
abashed  by  the  fame  her  peasant  lover  brought 
her.  Barefooted,  yellow  -  haired,  she  passes 
swiftly  by ;  and  with  her,  hand  in  hand,  walks 
Scotland's  queen,  sad  Jane  Beaufort,  "  the 
fairest  younge  floure  "  that  ever  won  the  heart 
of  royal  captive  and  suffered  the  martyrdom 
of  love.  England  sends  to  that  far  land  Stella, 
with  eyes  like  stars,  and  a  veil  of  gossamer 
hiding  her  delicate  beauty,  and  Celia,  and 


32  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

false  Lucasta,  and  Castara,  tantalizingly  dis- 
creet, in  whose  dimples  Cupid  is  fain  to  linger 
sighing,  exiled,  poor  frozen  god,  from  the 

"  Chaste  nunnery  of  her  breasts." 

Sacharissa,  too,  stands  near,  with  a  shade  of 
listlessness  in  her  sweet  eyes,  as  though  she 
wearied  a  little  of  Master  Waller's  courtly 
strains.  A  withered  rose  droops  from  her 
white  fingers,  preaching  its  mute  sermon,  and 
preaching  it  all  in  vain ;  for  rose  and  lady 
live  forever,  linked  to  each  other's  fame.  And 
by  her  side,  casting  her  fragile  loveliness  in 
the  shade,  is  one  of  different  mould,  a  sump- 
tuous, smiling  woman,  on  whom  Sacharissa's 
blue  eyes  fall  with  a  soft  disdain.  We  know 
this  indolent  beauty  by  the  brave  vibration 
of  her  tempestuous  silken  robe,  by  the  ruby 
carcanet  that  clasps  her  throat,  the  rainbow 
ribbon  around  her  slender  waist,  the  jewels 
wedged  knuckle-deep  on  every  tapering  finger, 
and  even  —  oh,  vanity  of  vanities !  —  on  one 
small  rosy  thumb.  We  know  her  by  the 
scented  beads  upon  her  arm,  and  by  the  sweet 
and  subtle  odors  of  storax  and  spikenard  and 
galbanum  that  breathe  softly  forth  from  her 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  33 

brocaded  bodice,  and  from  her  hair's  dark 
meshes  caught  in  a  golden  net.  It  is  she  to 
whom  the  glow-worms  lent  their  eyes,  and  the 
elves  their  wings,  and  the  stars  their  shooting 
fires,  as  she  wandered  through  the  dewy  woods 
to  meet  her  lover's  steps.  It  is  Herrick's 
Julia  whom  we  see  so  clearly  through  the  mist 
of  centuries,  that  cannot  veil  nor .  dim  the 
brightness  of  her  presence. 

To  ask  how  many  of  these  fair  dames  have 
gone  through  the  formality  of  living,  and  how 
many  exist  only  by  the  might  of  a  poet's 
breath,  is  but  a  thankless  question.  All  share 
alike  in  that  true  being  which  may  not  be 
blown  out  like  the  flame  of  a  taper ;  in  that 
true  entity  which  Caesar  and  Hamlet  hold  in 
common,  and  which  reveals  them  side  by  side. 
Mr.  Gosse,  for  example,  assures  us  that  Julia 
really  walked  the  earth,  and  even  gives  us 
some  details  of  her  mundane  pilgrimage  ; 
other  critics  smile,  and  shake  their  heads,  and 
doubt.  It  matters  not ;  she  lives,  and  she 
will  continue  to  live  when  we  who  dispute  the 
matter  lie  voiceless  in  our  graves.  The  es- 
sence of  her  personality  lingers  on  every  page 
where  Herrick  sings  of  her.  His  verse  is 


34  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

heavy  with  her  spicy  perfumes,  glittering  with 
her  many-colored  jewels,  lustrous  with  the 
shimmer  of  her  silken  petticoats.  Her  very 
shadow,  he  sighs,  distills  sweet  odors  on  the 
air,  and  draws  him  after  her,  faint  with  their 
amorous  languor.  How  lavish  she  is  with  her 
charms,  this  woman  who  neither  thinks  nor 
suffers;  who  prays,  indeed,  sometimes,  with 
great  serenity,  and  dips  her  snowy  finger  in 
the  font  of  blessed  water,  but  whose  spiritual 
humors  pale  before  the  calm  vigor  of  her 
earthly  nature !  How  kindly,  how  tranquil, 
how  unmoved,  she  is ;  listening  with  the  same 
slow  smile  to  her  lover's  fantastic  word-play, 
to  the  fervid  conceits  with  which  he  beguiles 
the  summer  idleness,  and  to  the  frank  and 
sudden  passion  with  which  he  conjures  her, 
"  dearest  of  thousands,"  to  close  his  eyes  when 
death  shall  summon  him,  to  shed  some  true 
tears  above  the  sod,  to  clasp  forever  the  book 
in  which  he  writes  her  name  !  How  gently 
she  would  have  fulfilled  these  last  sad  duties 
had  the  discriminating  fates  called  her  to  his 
bier ;  how  fragrant  the  sighs  she  would  have 
wafted  in  that  darkened  chamber  ;  how  sin- 
cere the  temperate  sorrow  for  a  remediable 


I 

K, 

ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS. 

loss!  And  then,  out  into  the  glowing  sun- 
light, where  life  is  sweet,  and  the  world  ex- 
ults, and  the  warm  blood  tingles  in  our  veins, 
and,  underneath  the  scattered  primrose  blos- 
soms, the  frozen  dead  lie  forgotten  in  their 
graves. 

What  gives  to  the  old  love-songs  their  pe- 
culiar felicity,  their  undecaying  brightness,  is 
this  constant  sounding  of  a  personal  note ; 
this  artless  candor  with  which  we  are  taken 
by  the  hand  and  led  straight  into  the  lady's 
presence,  are  bidden  to  admire  her  beauty  and 
her  wit,  are  freely  reminded  of  her  faults  and 
her  caprices,  and  are  taught,  with  many  a 
sigh  and  tear,  and  laughter  bubbling  through- 
out all,  what  a  delicious  and  unprofitable  pas- 
time is  the  love-making  of  a  poet. 

"  I  lose  but  what  was  never  mine," 

sings  Carew  with  gay  philosophy,  contemplat- 
ing the  perfidious  withdrawal  of  Celia's  kind- 
ness ;  and  after  worshiping  hotly  at  her  shrine, 
and  calling  on  all  the  winds  of  heaven  to  wit- 
ness his  desires,  he  accepts  his  defeat  with 
undimmed  brow,  and  with  melodious  frankness 
returns  the  false  one  her  disdain  :  — 


36  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

"  No  tears,  Celia,  now  shall  win 

My  resolved  heart  to  return  ; 
I  have  searched  thy  soul  within, 

And  find  naught  but  pride  and  scorn. 
I  have  learned  thy  arts,  and  now 
Can  disdain  as  much  as  thou." 

From  which  heroic  altitude  we  see  him  pres- 
ently descending  to  protest  with  smiling  lips 
that  love  shall  part  with  his  arrows  and  the 
doves  of  Venus  with  their  pretty  wings,  that 
the  sun  shall  fade  and  the  stars  fall  blinking 
from  the  skies,  that  heaven  shall  lose  its  de- 
lights and  hell  its  torments,  that  the  very  fish 
shall  burn  in  the  cool  waters  of  the  ocean,  if 
he  forsakes  or  neglects  his  Celia's  embraces. 

It  was  Carew,  indeed,  who  first  sounded 
these  "  courtly  amorous  strains "  throughout 
the  English  land ;  who  first  taught  his  fellow- 
poets  that  to  sing  of  love  was  not  the  occa- 
sional pastime,  but  the  serious  occupation  of 
their  lives.  Yet  what  an  easy,  indolent  suitor 
he  is  !  What  lazy  raptures  over  Celia's  eyes 
and  lips !  What  finely  poised  compliments, 
delicate  as  rose  leaves,  and  well  fitted  for  the 
inconstant  beauty  who  listened,  with  faint 
blushes  and  transient  interest,  to  the  song ! 
"He  loved  wine  and  roses,"  says  Mr.  Gosse, 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  37 

"  and  fair  florid  women,  to  whom  he  could 
indite  joyous  or  pensive  poems  about  their 
comeliness,  adoring  it  while  it  lasted,  regret- 
ting it  when  it  faded.  He  has  not  the  same 
intimate  love  of  detail  as  Herrick ;  we  miss  in 
his  poetry  those  realistic  touches  that  give 
such  wonderful  freshness  to  the  verses  of  the 
younger  poet ;  but  the  habit  of  the  two  men's 
minds  was  very  similar.  Both  were  pagans, 
and  given  up  to  an  innocent  hedonism  ;  nei- 
ther was  concerned  with  much  beyond  the 
eternal  commonplaces  of  bodily  existence,  the 
attraction  of  beauty,  the  mutability  of  life, 
the  brevity  and  sweetness  of  enjoyment." 

These  things  are  quite  enough,  however,  to 
make  exceedingly  good  poets,  Mrs.  Browning 
to  the  contrary,  notwithstanding.  "  I  never 
mistook  pleasure  for  the  final  cause  of  poetry, 
nor  leisure  for  the  hour  of  the  poet,"  wrote 
the  authoress  of  "Aurora  Leigh,"  and  we  quail 
before  the  deadly  earnestness  of  the  avowal. 
But  pleasure  and  leisure  between  them  have 
begotten  work  far  more  complete  and  artistic 
than  anything  Mrs.  Browning  ever  gave  to  an 
admiring  world.  Pleasure  and  leisure  are  re- 
sponsible for  "L'  Allegro"  and  "II  Penseroso," 


38  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

for  "  Kubla  Khan  "  and  "  The  Eve  of  St.  Ag- 
nes," for  "  Tani  O'Shanter,"  and  "  A  Dream 
of  Fair  Women,"  and  "  The  Bells."  There  is 
so  much  talk  about  Herrick's  paganism  that  it 
has  become  one  of  the  things  we  credit  without 
inquiry ;  shrugging  our  shoulders  over  Corinna 
and  her  May  blossoms,  and  passing  by  that 
devout  prayer  of  thanksgiving  for  the  simple 
blessings  of  life,  for  the  loaf  and  the  cup,  the 
winter  hearthstone  and  the  summer  sun.  There 
is  such  a  widely  diffused  belief  in  the  necessity 
for  a  serious  and  urgent  motive  in  art  that 
we  have  grown  to  think  less  of  the  outward 
construction  of  a  poem  than  of  the  dominant 
impulse  which  evoked  it.  Mrs.  Browning, 
with  all  her  noble  idealism  and  her  profound 
sense  of  responsibility,  was  most  depressingly 
indifferent  about  form,  and  was  quite  a  law 
to  herself  in  the  matter  of  rhymes.  Carew, 
whose  avowed  object  was  to  flatter  Celia  and 
Celia's  fair  rivals,  proved  himself  "  enamored 
of  perfection,"  and  wrought  with  infinite  care 
and  delicacy  upon  his  fragile  little  verses.  If 
he  only  played  at  love-making,  he  was  seri- 
ous enough  as  a  poet ;  and,  amid  the  careless 
exuberance  of  his  time,  he  came  to  be  re- 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  39 

garded,  like  Flaubert  some  generations  later, 
as  a  veritable  martyr  to  style.  He  brought 
forth  his  lyrical  children,  complained  Sir  John 
Suckling,  with  trouble  and  pain,  instead  of 
with  that  light  -  hearted  spontaneity  which 
distinguished  his  contemporaries,  and  which 
made  their  poetry  so  deliciously  easy  to  write, 
and  so  generally  unprofitable  to  read.  Suck- 
ling himself,  and  Lovelace,  and  the  host  of 
courtly  writers  who  toyed  so  gracefully  and  so 
joyously  with  their  art,  ignored  for  the  most 
part  all  severity  of  workmanship,  and  made  it 
their  especial  pride  to  compose  with  gentle- 
manl}7  ease.  The  result  may  be  seen  in  a 
mass  of  half-forgotten  rubbish,  and  in  a  few 
incomparable  songs,  which  are  as  fresh  and 
lovely  to-day  as  when  they  first  rang  the 
praises  of  Lucasta,  or  the  fair  Althea,  or 
Chloris,  tne  favorite  daughter  of  wanton 
Aphrodite.  They  are  the  models  for  all  love- 
songs  and  for  all  time,  and,  in  their  delicate 
beauty,  they  endure  like  fragile  pieces  of  por- 
celain, to  prove  how  light  a  thing  can  bear  the 
weight  of  immortality.  We  cannot  surpass 
them,  we  cannot  steal  their  vivacious  grace, 
we  cannot  feel  ourselves  first  in  a  field  where 


40  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

such  delicious  and  unapproachable  things  have 
been  already  whispered. 

"  Ah !  f rustics  par  les  anciens  homines, 
Nous  sentons  le  regret  jaloux, 
Qu'ils  aient  e'te'  ce  que  nous  sommes, 
Qu'ils  aient  eu  nos  coeurs  avant  nous." 

The  best  love-poems  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  amply  fulfill  the  require- 
ments suggested  by  Southey  :  their  sentiment 
is  always  "  necessary,  and  voluptuous,  and 
right."  They  are  no  "made-dishes  at  the 
Muses'  banquet,"  but  each  one  appears  as  the 
embodiment  of  a  passing  emotion.  In  those 
three  faultless  little  verses  "  Going  to  the 
Wars,"  a  single  thought  is  presented  us, — 
regretful  love  made  heroic  by  the  loyal  fare- 
well of  the  soldier  suitor :  — 

"  Tell  me  not,  sweet,  I  am  unkind, 

That  from  the  nunnery 
Of  thy  chaste  breast  and  quiet  mind 
To  war  and  arms  I  flee. 

"  True,  a  new  mistress  now  I  chase, 

The  first  foe  in  the  field, 
And,  with  a  stronger  faith,  embrace 
A  sword,  a  horse,  a  shield. 

"  Yet  this  inconstancy  is  such 
As  you  too  shall  adore,  — 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  41 

I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much, 
Loved  I  not  honour  more." 

In  the  still  more  beautiful  lines,  "  To  Althea 
from  Prison,"  passion,  made  dignified  by  suf- 
fering, rewards  with  lavish  hand  the  captive, 
happy  with  his  chains  :  — 

"  If  I  have  freedom  in  my  love, 

And  in  my  soul  am  free, 
Angels  alone,  that  soar  above, 
Enjoy  such  liberty." 

In  both  poems  there  is  a  tempered  delicacy, 
revealing  the  finer  grain  of  that  impetuous 
soul  which  wrecked  itself  so  harshly  in  the 
stormy  waters  of  life.  Whether  we  think  of 
Lovelace  as  the  spoiled  darling  of  a  voluptu- 
ous court,  or  as  dying  of  want  in  a  cellar ; 
whether  we  picture  him  as  sighing  at  the  feet 
of  beauty,  or  as  fighting  stoutly  for  his  country 
and  his  king ;  whether  he  is  winning  all  hearts 
by  the  resistless  charms  of  voice  and  pres- 
ence, or  returning  broken  from  battle  to  suffer 
the  bitterness  of  poverty  and  desertion,  we 
know  that  in  his  two  famous  lyrics  we  possess 
the  real  and  perfect  fruit,  the  golden  harvest, 
of  that  troubled  and  many-sided  existence. 
A  still  smaller  gleaning  comes  to  us  from  Sir 


42  POINTS   OF    VIEW. 

Charles  Sedley,  who,  for  two  hundred  years, 
has  been  preserved  from  oblivion  by  a  little 
wanton  verse  about  Phillis,  full  of  such  good- 
natured  contentment  and  disbelief  that  we 
grow  young  and  cheerful  again  in  contem- 
plating it.  Should  any  long-suffering  reader 
desire  to  taste  the  sweets  of  sudden  contrast 
and  of  sharp  reaction,  let  him  turn  from  the 
strenuous,  analytic,  half-caustic,  and  wholly 
discomforting  love-poem  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury —  Mr.  Browning's  word-picture  of  "  A 
Pretty  "Woman,"  for  example  —  back  to  those 
swinging  and  jocund  lines  where  Phillis, 

"  Faithless  as  the  winds  or  seas," 

smiles  furtively  upon  her  suitor,  whose  clear- 
sightedness avails  him  nothing,  and  who  plays 
the  game  merrily  to  the  end  :  — 

"She  deceiving, 

I  believing, 
What  need  lovers  wish  for  more  ?  " 

We  who  read  are  very  far  from  wishing  for 
anything  more.  With  the  Ettrick  Shepherd, 
we  are  fain  to  remember  that  old  tunes,  and 
old  songs,  and  well-worn  fancies  are  best  fitted 
for  so  simple  and  so  ancient  a  theme :  — 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  43 

"  A'  the  world  has  been  in  love  at  ae  time 
or  ither  o'  its  life,  and  kens  best  hoo  to  ex- 
press its  ain  passion.  What  see  you  ever  in 
love-sangs  that 's  at  a'  new  ?  Never  ae  single 
word.  It  's  just  the  same  thing  over  again, 
like  a  vernal  shower  patterin'  amang  the  bud- 
din'  words.  But  let  the  lines  come  sweetly, 
and  saftly,  and  a  wee  wildly  too,  frae  the  lips 
of  Genius,  and  they  shall  delight  a'  mankind, 
and  womankind  too,  without  ever  wearyin' 
them,  whether  they  be  said  or  sung.  But  try 
to  be  original,  to  keep  aff  a'  that  ever  has  been 
said  afore,  for  fear  o'  plagiarism,  or  in  ambi- 
tion o'  originality,  and  your  poem  'ill  be  like  a 
bit  o'  ice  that  you  hae  taken  into  your  mouth 
unawares  for  a  lump  o'  white  sugar." 

Burns's  unrivaled  songs  come  the  nearest, 
perhaps,  to  realizing  this  charming  bit  of  de- 
scription ;  and  the  Shepherd,  anticipating 
Schopenhauer's  philosophy  of  love,  is  quite  as 
prompt  as  Burns  to  declare  its  promise  sweeter 
than  its  fulfillment :  — 

"  Love  is  a  soft,  bright,  balmy,  tender,  tri- 
umphant, and  glorious  lie,  in  place  of  which 
nature  offers  us  in  mockery,  during  a'  the 
rest  o'  our  lives,  the  puir,  paltry,  pitiful, 


44  POINTS   Of1  VIEW. 

fusionless,    faded,   cauldrified,  and   chittering 
substitute,  Truth ! " 

This  is  not  precisely  the  way  in  which  we 
suffer  ourselves  nowadays  to  talk  about  truth, 
but  a  few  generations  back,  people  still  cher- 
ished a  healthy  predilection  for  the  comforta- 
ble delusions  of  life.  Mingling  with  the  mu- 
sic of  the  sweet  old  love-songs,  lurking  amid 
their  passionate  protestations,  there  is  always 
a  subtle  sense  of  insecurity,  a  good-humored 
desire  to  enjoy  the  present,  and  not  peer  too 
closely  into  the  perilous  uncertainties  of  the 
future.  Their  very  exaggerations,  the  quaint 
and  extravagant  conceits  which  offend  our 
more  exacting  taste,  are  part  of  this  general 
determination  to  be  wisely  blind  to  the  ill-bred 
obtrusiveness  of  facts.  Accordingly  there  is 
no  staying  the  hand  of  an  Elizabethan  poet, 
or  of  his  successor  under  the  Restoration,  when 
either  undertakes  to  sing  his  lady's  praises. 
Sun,  moon,  and  skies  bend  down  to  do  her 
homage,  and  to  acknowledge  their  own  com- 
parative dimness. 

"  Stars,  indeed,  fair  creatures  be," 

admits  Wither   indulgently,  and   pearls   and 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS. 

rubies  are  not  without  their  merits ;  but  when 
the  beauty  of  Arete  dawns  upon  him,  all 
things  else  seem  dull  and  vapid  by  her  side. 
Nay,  his  poetry,  even,  is  born  of  her  complai- 
sance, his  talents  are  fostered  by  her  smiles,  he 
gains  distinction  only  as  her  favor  may  per- 
mit. 

"  I  no  skill  in  numbers  had, 
More  than  every  shepherd's  lad, 
Till  she  taught  me  strains  that  were 
Pleasing  to  her  gentle  ear. 
Her  fair  splendour  and  her  worth 
From  obscureness  drew  me  forth. 
And,  because  I  had  no  muse, 
She  herself  deigned  to  infuse 
All  the  skill  by  which  I  climb 
To  these  praises  in  my  rhyme." 

Donne,  the  most  ardent  of  lovers  and  the 
most  crabbed  of  poets,  who  united  a  great  de- 
votion to  his  fond  and  faithful  wife  with  a  re- 
markably poor  opinion  of  her  sex  in  general, 
pushed  his  adulations  to  the  extreme  verge  of 
absurdity.  We  find  him  writing  to  a  lady 
sick  of  a  fever  that  she  cannot  die  because  all 
creation  would  perish  with  her,  — 

"  The  whole  world  vapours  in  thy  breath." 

After  which  ebullition,  it  is  hardly  a  matter 


46  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

of  surprise  to  know  that  he  considered  females 
in  the  light  of  creatures  whom  it  had  pleased 
Providence  to  make  fools. 

tt  Hope  not  for  mind  in  women  !  " 

is  his  warning  cry  ;  at  their  best,  a  little  sweet- 
ness and  a  little  wit  form  all  their  earthly  por- 
tion. Yet  the  note  of  true  passion  struck  by 
Donne  in  those  glowing  addresses,  those  de- 
jected farewells  to  his  wife,  echoes  like  a  cry 
of  rapture  and  of  pain  out  of  the  stillness  of 
the  past.  Her  sorrow  at  the  parting  rends 
his  heart ;  if  she  but  sighs,  she  sighs  his  soul 
away. 

"  When  thou  weep'st,  unkindly  kind, 
My  life's  blood  doth  decay. 

It  cannot  be 

That  thou  lov'st  me,  as  thou  say'st, 
If  in  thine  my  life  thou  waste ; 
Thou  art  the  life  of  me." 

Again,  in  that  strange  poem  "  A  Valediction 
of  Weeping,"  he  finds  her  tears  more  than  he 
can  endure ;  and,  with  the  fond  exaggeration 
of  a  lover,  he  entreats  forbearance  in  her 
grief  :  — 

"  O  more  than  moon, 

Draw  not  up  seas  to  drown  me  in  thy  sphere  ; 
Weep  me  not  dead  in  thine  arms,  but  forbear 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  47 

To  teach  the  sea  what  it  may  do  too  soon. 
Let  not  the  wind  example  find 
To  do  me  more  harm  than  it  purposeth ; 
Since  thou  and  I  sigh  one  another's  breath, 
Whoe'er  sighs  most  is  cruellest,  and  hastes  the  other's 
death." 

There  is  a  lingering  sweetness  in  these  lines, 
for  all  their  manifest  unwisdom,  that  is  sur- 
passed only  by  a  pathetic  sonnet  of  Drayton's, 
where  the  pain  of  parting,  bravely  borne  at 
first,  grows  suddenly  too  sharp  for  sufferance, 
and  the  lover's  pride  breaks  and  melts  into 
the  passion  of  a  last  appeal :  — 

"  Since  there  's  no  helpe,  — come,  let  us  kisse  and  parte. 
Nay,  I  have  done,  —  you  get  no  more  of  me  ; 
And  I  am  glad,  —  yea,  glad  with  all  my  hearte, 
That  thus  so  cleanly  I  myself  can  free. 
Shake  hands  forever  !  —  cancel  all  our  vows ; 
And  when  we  meet  at  any  time  againe, 
Be  it  not  scene  in  either  of  our  brows, 
That  we  one  jot  of  former  love  retaine. 

"  Now  —  at  the  last  gaspe  of  Love's  latest  breath  — 
When,  his  pulse  failing,  passion  speec.hless  lies ; 
When  Faith  is  kneeling  by  his  bed  of  death, 
And  Innocence  is  closing  up  his  eyes, 
Now !     if  thou  would'st  — -  when  all  have   given  him 

over  — 
From  death  to  life  thou  might' st  him  yet  recover." 

Here,  at  least,  we   have  grace  of   sentiment 


48  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

and  beauty  of  form  combined  to  make  a  per- 
fect whole.  It  seems  strange  indeed  that  Mr. 
Saintsbury,  who  gives  such  generous  praise  to 
Drayton's  patriotic  poems,  his  legends,  his 
epistles,  even  his  prose  prefaces,  should  have 
no  single  word  to  spare  for  this  most  tender 
and  musical  of  leave-takings. 

As  for  the  capricious  humors  and  over- 
wrought imagery  which  disfigure  so  many  of 
the  early  love-songs,  they  have  received  their 
full  allotment  of  censure,  and  have  provoked 
the  scornful  mirth  of  critics  too  staid  or  too 
sensitive  to  be  tolerant.  We  hear  more  of 
them,  sometimes,  than  of  the  merits  which 
should  win  them  forgiveness.  Lodge,  daz- 
zled by  Eosalynde's  beauty,  is  ill  disposed  to 
pass  lightly  over  the  catalogue  of  her  charms. 
Her  lips  are  compared  to  budded  roses,  her 
teeth  to  ranks  of  lilies  ;  her  eyes  are 

"  sapphires  set  in  snow, 
Refining  heaven  by  every  wink," 

her  cheeks  are  blushing  clouds,  and  her  neck 
is  a  stately  tower  where  the  god  of  love  lies 
captive.  All  things  in  nature  contribute  to 
her  excellence :  — 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  49 

"  With  Orient  pearl,  with  ruby  red, 

With  marble  white,  with  sapphire  blue, 
Her  body  every  way  is  fed, 

Yet  soft  to  touch,  and  sweet  in  view." 

But  when  this  fair  representative  of  all  flow- 
ers and  gems,  "  smiling  to  herself  to  think 
of  her  new  entertained  passion,"  lifts  up  the 
music  of  her  voice  in  that  enchanting  madri- 
gal,— 

"  Love  in  my  bosom,  like  a  bee, 

Doth  suck  his  sweet ; 
Now  with  his  wings  he  plays  with  me, 
Now  with  his  feet,"  — 

we  know  her  at  once  for  the  kinswoman  and 
precursor  of  another  and  dearer  Rosalind, 
who,  with  boyish  swagger  and  tell-tale  grace, 

"  like  a  ripe  sister," 

gathers  from  the  trees  of  Arden  the  first  fruits 
of  Orlando's  love.  It  was  Lodge  who  pointed 
the  way  to  that  enchanted  forest,  where  exiles 
and  rustics  waste  the  jocund  hours,  where  toil 
and  care  are  alike  forgotten,  where  amorous 
verse-making  represents  the  serious  occupa- 
tion of  life,  and  where  the  thrice  fortunate 
Jaques  can  afford  to  dally  with  melancholy  for 
lack  of  any  cankering  sorrow  at  his  heart. 


50  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

William  Habbington,  who  sings  to  us  with 
such  monotonous  sweetness  of  Castara's  inno- 
cent joys,  surpasses  Lodge  alike  in  the  charm 
of  his  descriptions  and  in  the  extravagance  of 
his  follies.  In  reading  him  we  are  sharply 
reminded  of  Klopstock's  warning,  that  "  a 
man  should  speak  of  his  wife  as  seldom  and 
with  as  much  modesty  as  of  himself ; "  for 
Habbington,  who  glories  in  the  fairness  and 
the  chastity  of  his  spouse,  becomes  unduly 
boastful  now  and  then  in  vaunting  these  per- 
fections to  the  world.  He,  at  least,  being 
safely  married  to  Castara,  feels  none  of  that 
haunting  insecurity  which  disturbs  his  fellow- 
poets. 

"  All  her  vows  religious  be, 
And  her  love  she  vows  to  me," 

he  says  complacently,  and  then  stops  to  assure 
us  in  plain  prose  that  she  is  "  so  unvitiated  by 
conversation  with  the  world  that  the  subtle- 
minded  of  her  sex  would  deem  it  ignorance." 
Even  to  her  husband-lover  she  is  "  thrifty  of 
a  kiss,"  and  in  the  marble  coldness  and  purity 
of  her  breast  his  glowing  roses  find  a  chilly 
sepulchre.  Cupid,  perishing,  it  would  seem, 
from  a  mere  description  of  her  merits,  or,  as 
Habbington  singularly  expresses  it,  — 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  51 

"  But  if  you,  when  this  you  hear, 
Fall  down  murdered  through  your  ear," 

is,  by  way  of  compensation,  decently  interred 
in  the  dimpled  cheek  which  has  so  often  been 
his  lurking-place.  Lilies  and  roses  and  vio- 
lets exhale  their  odors  around  him,  a  beau- 
teous sheet  of  lawn  is  drawn  up  over  his  cold 
little  body,  and  all  who  see  the  "perfumed 
hearse  "  —  presumably  the  dimple  —  envy  the 
dead  god,  blest  in  his  repose.  This  is  as  bad 
in  its  way  as  Lovelace's  famous  lines  on  "  El- 
linda's  Glove,"  where  that  modest  article  of 
dress  is  compelled  to  represent  in  turn  a  snow- 
white  farm  with  five  tenements,  whose  fair 
mistress  has  deserted  them,  an  ermine  cabinet 
too  small  and  delicate  for  any  occupant  but 
its  own,  and  a  fiddle-case  without  its  fine- 
tuned  instrument.  Dr.  Thomas  Campion, 
who,  after  rhyming  delightfully  all  his  life, 
was  pleased  to  write  a  treatise  against  that 
"vulgar  and  artificial  custom,"  compares  his 
lady's  face,  in  one  musical  little  song,  to  a  fer- 
tile garden,  and  her  lips  to  ripe  cherries, 
which  none  may  buy  or  steal  because  her  eyes, 
like  twin  angels,  have  them  in  keeping,  and 
her  brows,  like  bended  bows,  defend  such 
treasures  from  the  crowd. 


52  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

"  Those  cherries  fairly  do  enclose 

Of  Orient  pearl  a  double  row, 
Which,  when  her  lovely  laughter  shows, 

They  look  like  rose-"buds  filled  with  snow ; 
Yet  them  nor  peer  nor  prince  can  buy, 
Till '  Cherry  ripe  '  themselves  do  cry." 

This  dazzling  array  of  mixed  metaphors 
with  which  the  early  poets  love  to  bewilder  us, 
and  the  whimsical  conceits  which  must  have 
cost  them  many  laborious  hours,  have  at  least 
one  redeeming  merit:  they  are  for  the  most 
part  illustrative  of  the  lady's  graces,  and  not 
of  the  writer's  lacerated  heart.  They  tell  us, 
seldom  indeed  with  Herrick's  intimate  realism, 
but  with  many  quaint  and  suspicious  exag- 
gerations, whether  the  fair  one  was  false  or 
fond,  light  or  dark,  serious  or  flippant,  gentle 
or  high-spirited ;  what  fashion  of  clothes  she 
wore,  what  jewels  and  flowers  were  her  adorn- 
ment :  and  these  are  the  things  we  take  plea- 
sure in  knowing.  It  is  Mr.  Gosse's  especial 
grievance  against  Waller  that  he  does  not  en- 
lighten us  on  such  points.  "  We  can  form," 
he  complains,  "  but  a  very  vague  idea  of  Lady 
Dorothy  Sidney  from  the  Sacharissa  poems ; 
she  is  everywhere  overshadowed  by  the  poet 
himself.  We  are  told  that  she  can  sleep 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  53 

when  she  pleases,  and  this  inspires  a  copy  of 
verses  ;  but  later  on  we  are  told  that  she  can 
do  anything  but  sleep  when  she  pleases,  and 
this  leads  to  another  copy  of  verses,  which 
leave  us  exactly  where  we  were  when  we 
started."  Indeed,  those  who  express  surprise 
at  Sacharissa's  coldness  have  perhaps  failed  to 
notice  the  graceful  chill  of  her  lover's  poems. 
"  Cupid  might  have  clapped  him  on  the  shoul- 
der, but  we  could  warrant  him  heart-whole." 
For  seven  years  he  carried  on  his  languid  and 
courtly  suit  without  once  warming  to  the  pas- 
sion point;  and  when  Lady  Dorothy  at  last 
made  up  her  mind  to  marry  somebody  else,  he 
expressed  his  cordial  acquiescence  in  her  views 
in  a  most  charming  and  playful  letter  to  her 
young  sister,  Lady  Lucy  Sidney,  —  a  letter 
containing  just  enough  well-bred  regret  to 
temper  its  wit  and  gayety.  He  had  fulfilled 
his  part  in  singing  the  praises  of  his  mistress, 
in  preaching  to  her  sweetly  through  the  soft 
petals  of  a  rose,  and  in  sighing  with  gentle 
complacency  over  the  happy  girdle  which 
bound  her  slender  waist. 

"  A  narrow  compass,  and  yet  there 
Dwelt  all  that 's  good,  and  all  that 's  fair; 


54  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

Give  me  but  this  ribbon  bound 

Take  all  the  rest  the  sun  goes  round." 

Here  we  have  the  prototype  of  that  other 
and  more  familiar  cincture  which  clasped  the 
Miller's  Daughter;  and  it  must  be  admit- 
ted that  Lord  Tennyson's  maiden,  with  her 
curls,  and  her  jeweled  ear-rings,  and  the  neck- 
lace rising  and  falling  all  day  long  upon  her 
"  balmy  bosom,"  is  more  suggestive  of  a  court 
beauty,  like  the  fair  Sacharissa,  than  of  a 
buxom  village  girl. 

The  most  impersonal,  however,  of  all  the 
poet-lovers  is  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who,  in  the 
hundred  and  eight  sonnets  dedicated  to  Stella, 
has  managed  to  tell  us  absolutely  nothing 
about  her.  The  atmosphere  of  haunting  indi- 
viduality which  gives  these  sonnets  their  half- 
bitter  flavor,  and  which  made  them  a  living 
power  in  the  stormy  days  of  Elizabethan 
poetry,  reveals  to  us,  not  Stella,  but  Astro- 
phel ;  not  Penelope  Devereux,  but  Sidney 
himself,  bruised  by  regrets  and  resentful  of 
his  fate.  They  are  not  by  any  means  passion- 
ate love-songs ;  they  are  not  even  sanguine 
enough  to  be  persuasive ;  they  are  steeped 
throughout  in  a  pungent  melancholy,  too  rest- 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  55 

less  for  resignation,  too  gentle  for  anger,  too 
manly  for  vain  self-indulgence.  In  their  deli- 
cacy and  their  languor  we  read  the  story  of 
that  lingering  suit  which  lacked  the  elation  of 
success  and  the  heart-break  of  failure.  In- 
deed, Sidney  seems  never  to  have  been  a  very 
ardent  lover  until  the  lady  was  taken  away 
from  him  and  married  to  Lord  Rich,  when  he 
bewailed  her  musically  for  a  couple  of  years, 
and  then  consoled  himself  with  Frances  Wal- 
singham,  who  must  have  found  the  sonnets  to 
her  rival  pleasant  reading  for  her  leisure 
hours.  This  is  the  bald  history  of  that  poetic 
passion  which  made  the  names  of  Stella  and 
Astrophel  famous  in  English  song,  and  which 
stirred  the  disgust  of  Horace  Walpole,  whose 
appreciation  of  such  tender  themes  was  of  a 
painfully  restricted  nature.  In  their  thought- 
ful, introspective,  and  self -revealing  character, 
Sidney's  love-poems  bear  a  closer  likeness  to 
the  genius  of  the  nineteenth  than  to  that  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  If  we  want  to  see  the 
same  spirit  at  work,  we  have  but  to  take  up 
the  fifty  sonnets  by  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti, 
called  "  The  House  of  Life,"  wherein  the 
writer's  soul  is  clearly  reflected,  but  no  glimpse 


56  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

is  vouchsafed  us  of  the  woman  who  has  dis- 
turbed its  depth.  Their  vague,  sweet  pathos, 
their  brooding  melancholy,  their  reluctant  ac- 
ceptance of  a  joyless  mood,  are  all  familiar 
features  in  the  earlier  poet.  Such  verses  as 
those  beginning,  — 

"  Look  in  my  face ;  my  name  is  Might-have-been  ; 
I  am  also  called  No-more,  Too-late,  Farewell," 

are  of  the  self-same  mintage  as  Sidney's 
golden  coins,  only  more  modern,  and  perhaps 
more  perfect  in  form,  and  a  trifle  more  shad- 
owy in  substance.  If  Sidney  shows  us  but 
little  of  Stella,  and  if  that  little  is,  judged  by 
the  light  of  her  subsequent  career,  not  very 
accurately  represented,  Rossetti  far  surpasses 
him  in  unconscious  reticence.  He  is  not  un- 
willing to  analyze,  —  few  recent  poets  are,  — 
but  his  analysis  lays  bare  only  the  tumult  of 
his  own  heart,  the  lights  and  shades  of  his 
own  delicate  and  sensitive  nature. 

It  was  Sidney,  however,  who  first  pointed 
out  to  women,  with  clear  insistence,  the  ad- 
vantage of  having  poets  for  lovers,  and  the 
promise  of  immortality  thus  conferred  on 
them.  He  entreats  them  to  listen  kindly  to 
those  who  can  sing  their  praises  to  the  world. 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  57 

"For  so  doing  you  shall  be  most  fair,  most 
wise,  most  rich,  most  everything  !  You  shall 
feed  upon  superlatives."  Carew,  adopting  the 
same  tone,  and  less  gallant  than  Wither,  who 
refers  even  his  own  fame  to  Arete's  kindling 
glances,  tells  the  flaunting  Celia  very  plainly 
that  she  owes  her  dazzling  prominence  to  him 
alone. 

"  Know,  Celia !  since  thou  art  so  proud, 
'T  was  I  that  gave  thee  thy  renown ; 
Thou  hadst  in  the  forgotten  crowd 
Of  common  beauties  lived  unknown, 
Had  not  my  verse  exhaled  thy  name, 
And  with  it  impt  the  wings  of  fame." 

What  wonder  that,  under  such  conditions 
and  with  such  reminders,  a  passion  for  be- 
ing be-rhymed  seized  upon  all  women,  from 
the  highest  to  the  lowest,  from  the  marchion- 
ess at  court  to  the  orange-girl  smiling  in  the 
theatre !  —  a  passion  which  ended  its  flutter- 
ing existence  in  our  great-grandmothers'  al- 
bums. Yet  nothing  is  clearer,  when  we  study 
these  poetic  suits,  than  their  very  discourag- 
ing results.  The  pleasure  that  a  woman  takes 
in  being  courted  publicly  in  verse  is  a  very 
distinct  sensation  from  the  pleasure  that  she 
expects  to  take  when  being  courted  privately 


58  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

in  prose.  She  is  quick  to  revere  genius,  but 
in  her  secret  soul  she  seldom  loves  it.  Ge- 
nius, as  Hazlitt  scornfully  remarks,  "  says  such 
things,"  and  the  average  woman  distrusts 
"  such  things,"  and  wonders  why  the  poet  will 
not  learn  to  talk  and  behave  like  ordinary  peo- 
ple. It  hardly  needed  the  crusty  shrewdness 
of  Christopher  North  to  point  out  to  us  the 
arrant  ill-success  with  which  the  Muse  has 
always  gone  a-wooing.  1  "Making  love  and 
making  love-verses,"  he  explains,  "  are  two  of 
the  most  different  things  in  the  world,  and  I 
doubt  if  both  accomplishments  were  ever  found 
highly  united  in  the  same  gifted  individual. 
Inspiration  is  of  little  avail  either  to  gods  or 
men  in  the  most  interesting  affairs  of  life, 
those  of  the  earth.  The  pretty  maid  who 
seems  to  listen  kindly 

1  Kisses  the  cup,  and  passes  it  to  the  rest,' 

and  next  morning,  perhaps,  is  off  before  break- 
fast in  a  chaise-and-four  to  Gretna  Green, 
with  an  aid-de-camp  of  Wellington,  as  desti- 
tute of  imagination  as  his  master."  It  is  the 
cheerful  equanimity  with  which  the  older  poets 
anticipated  and  endured  some  such  finale  as 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  59 

this  which  gives  them  their  precise  advantage 
over  their  more  exacting  and  self-centred 
successors. 

For  what  is  the  distinctive  characteristic  of 
the  early  love-songs,  and  to  what  do  they  owe 
their  profound  and  penetrating  charm  ?  It  is 
that  quality  of  youth  which  Heine  so  subtly 
recognized  in  Eossini's  music,  and  which,  to 
his  world-worn  ears,  made  it  sweeter  than 
more  reflective  and  heavily  burdened  strains. 
Love  was  young  when  Herrick  and  Carew  and 
Suckling  went  a-wooing;  he  has  grown  now 
to  man's  estate,  and  the  burdens  of  manhood 
have  kept  pace  with  his  growing  powers.  It 
is  no  longer,  as  at  the  feast  of  Apollo,  a  con- 
test for  the  deftest  kiss,  but  a  life-and-death 
struggle  in  that  grim  arena  where  passion  and 
pain  and  sorrow  contend  for  mastery. 

44  Ah  !  how  sweet  it  is  to  love  ! 
Ah  !  how  gay  is  young  desire  !  " 

sang  Dryden,  who,  in  truth,  was  neither  sweet 
nor  gay  in  his  amorous  outpourings,  but  who 
merely  echoed  the  familiar  sentiments  of  his 
youth.  That  sweetness  and  gayety  of  the  past 
still  linger,  indeed,  in  some  half-forgotten  and 
wholly  neglected  verses  which  we  have  grown 


60  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

too  careless  or  too  cultivated  to  recall.  We 
harden  our  hearts  against  such  delicious  tri- 
fling as 

"  The  young  May  moon  is  beaming,  love, 
The  glow-worm's  lamp  is  gleaming,  love." 

We  will  have  none  of  its  pleasant  moral,  — 

"  'T  is  never  too  late  for  delight,  my  dear," 

and  we  will  not  even  listen  when  Mr.  Saints- 
bury  tells  us  with  sharp  impatience  that,  in 
turning  our  backs  so  coldly  upon  the  poet  who 
enraptured  our  grandfathers,  we  are  losing  a 
great  deal  that  we  can  ill  afford  to  spare. 
The  quality  of  youth  is  still  more  distinctly 
discernible  in  some  of  Thomas  Beddoes's  daz- 
zling little  songs,  stolen  straight  from  the 
heart  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  lustrous 
with  that  golden  light  which  set  so  long  ago. 
It  is  not  in  spirit  only,  nor  in  sentiment,  that 
this  resemblance  exists ;  the  words,  the  im- 
agery, the  swaying  music,  the  teeming  fancies 
of  the  younger  poet,  mark  him  as  one  strayed 
from  another  age,  and  wandering  companion- 
less  under  alien  skies.  Some  two  hundred 
years  before  Beddoes's  birth,  Drummond  of 
Hawthornden,  he  who  sang  so  tenderly  the 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  61 

praises  of  his  sweet  mistress,  dead  on  her 
wedding-day,  wrote  these  quaint  and  pretty 
lines  entreating  for  her  favor  :  — 

"  I  die,  dear  life,  unless  to  me  be  given 
As  many  kisses  as  the  Spring  hath  flowers, 
Or  there  be  silver  drops  in  Iris'  showers, 
Or  stars  there  be  in  all-embracing  heaven. 
And  if  displeased,  you  of  the  match  remain, 
You  shall  have  leave  to  take  them  back  again." 

In  Beddoes's  unfinished  drama  of  "  Torres- 
mond,"  we  find  Veronica's  maidens  singing  her 
to  sleep  with  just  such  bright  conceits  and 
soft  caressing  words,  and  their  song  rings 
like  an  echo  from  some  dim  old  room  where 
Lesbia,  or  Althea,  or  Celia  lies  a-dreaming :  — 

"  How  many  times  do  I  love  thee,  dear  ? 
Tell  me  how  many  thoughts  there  be 

In  the  atmosphere 

Of  a  new-fall'n  year, 
Whose  white  and  sable  hours  appear 
The  latest  flake  of  Eternity  : 
So  many  times  do  I  love  thee,  dear. 

"  How  many  times  do  I  love  again  ? 
Tell  me  how  many  beads  there  are 
In  a  silver  chain 
Of  evening  rain, 

Unraveled  from  the  tumbling  main, 
And  threading  the  eye  of  a  yellow  star : 
So  many  times  do  I  love  again." 


62  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

It  is  not  in  this  fairy  fashion  that  the  truly 
modern  poet  declares  his  passion ;  it  is  not 
thus  that  Wordsworth  sings  to  us  of  Lucy, 
the  most  alluring  and  shadowy  figure  in 
English  poetry,  —  Lucy,  richly  dowered  with 
a  few  short  verses  of  unapproachable  beauty. 
To  the  lover  of  Wordsworth  her  death  is  a 
lasting  hurt.  We  cannot  endure  to  think  of 
her  as  he  thinks  of  her,  — 

"  Rolled  round  in  earth's  diurnal  course 
With  rocks,  and  stones,  and  trees.' ' 

We  cannot  endure  that  anything  so  fine 
and  rare  should  slip  forever  from  the  sun- 
shine, and  that  the  secret  stars  should  look 
down  upon  her  maidenhood  no  more.  Brown- 
ing, too,  who  has  been  termed  the  poet  of  love, 
who  has  revealed  to  us  every  changeful  mood, 
every  stifled  secret,  every  light  and  shade  of 
human  emotion,  —  how  has  he  dealt  with  his 
engrossing  theme  ?  Beneath  his  unsparing 
touch,  at  once  burning  and  subtle,  the  soul 
lies  bare,  and  its  passions  rend  it  like  hounds. 
All  that  is  noble,  generous,  suffering,  shame- 
ful, finds  in  him  its  ablest  exponent.  Those 
strange,  fantastic  sentences  in  which  Mr.  Pa- 
ter has  analyzed  the  inscrutable  sorcery  of 


ENGLISH  LOVE-SONGS.  63 

Mona  Lisa,  beneath  whose  weary  eyelids  "the 
thoughts  and  experiences  of  the  world  lie 
shadowed,"  might  also  fitly  portray  the  image 
of  Love,  as  Browning  has  unveiled  him  to  our 
sight.  He  too  is  older  than  the  rocks,  and 
the  secrets  of  the  grave  and  of  the  deep  seas 
are  in  his  keeping.  He  too  expresses  all  that 
man  has  come  to  desire  in  the  ways  of  a 
thousand  years,  and  his  is  the  beauty  "  into 
which  the  soul  with  its  maladies  has  passed." 
The  slumbering  centuries  lie  coiled  beneath 
his  feet,  their  hidden  meaning  is  his  to  grasp, 
their  huge  and  restless  impulses  have  nour- 
ished him,  their  best  results  are  his  inherit- 
ance. But  he  is  not  glad,  for  the  maladies  of 
the  soul  have  stilled  his  laughter,  and  ihe 
brightness  of  youth  has  fled. 


BOOKS  THAT  HAVE  HINDERED  ME. 

So  many  grateful  and  impetuous  spirits 
have  recently  come  forward  to  tell  to  an  ap- 
proving world  how  they  have  been  benefited 
by  their  early  reading,  and  by  their  wisely 
chosen  favorites  in  literature,  that  the  trustful 
listener  begins  to  think,  against  his  own  rueful 
experience,  that  all  books  must  be  pleasant 
and  profitable  companions.  Those  who  have 
honored  us  with  confidence  in  this  matter 
seem  to  have  found  their  letters,  as  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  found  his  religion,  "  all  pure 
profit."  Edward  E.  Hale,  for  instance,  has 
been  "helped"  by  every  imaginable  writer, 
from  Marcus  Aurelius  to  the  amiable  au- 
thoress of  "  The  Wide,  Wide  World."  Mon- 
cure  D.  Conway  acknowledges  his  obligations 
to  an  infinite  variety  of  sources.  William 
T.  Harris  has  been  happy  enough  to  seize  in- 
stinctively upon  those  works  which  aroused 
his  "  latent  energies  to  industry  and  self-ac- 
tivity ;  "  and  Edward  Eggleston  has  gathered 


BOOKS  THAT  HAVE  HINDERED  ME.    65 

intellectual  sustenance  from  the  most  unex- 
pected quarters,  —  the  Rollo  Books,  and  Lind- 
ley  Murray's  Reader.  Only  Andrew  Lang 
and  Augustus  Jessop  are  disposed,  with  an 
untimely  levity,  to  confess  that  they  have  read 
for  amusement  rather  than  for  self-instruction, 
and  that  they  have  not  found  it  so  easily  at- 
tainable. 

Now  when  a  man  tells  us  that  he  has  been 
really  "  helped  "  by  certain  books,  we  natu- 
rally conclude  that  the  condition  reached  by 
their  assistance  is,  in  some  measure,  gratify- 
ing to  himself;  and,  by  the  same  token,  I 
am  disposed  to  argue  that  my  own  unsatis- 
factory development  may  be  the  result  of  less 
discreetly  selected  reading,  —  reading  for 
which,  in  many  cases,  I  was  wholly  irrespon- 
sible. I  notice  particularly  that  several  per- 
sons who  have  been  helped  acknowledge  a 
very  pleasing  debt  of  gratitude  to  their  early 
spelling-books,  to  Webster's  Elementary,  and 
to  those  modest  volumes  which  first  imparted 
to  them  the  mysteries  of  the  alphabet.  It  was 
not  so  with  me.  I  learned  my  letters,  at  the 
cost  of  infinite  tribulation,  out  of  a  horrible 
little  book  called  "  Reading  Without  Tears," 


66  POINTS   OF   VIE  W. 

which  I  trust  has  long  since  been  banished 
from  all  Christian  nurseries.  It  was  a  brown 
book,  and  had  on  its  cover  a  deceptive  picture 
of  two  stout  and  unclothed  Cupids  holding 
the  volume  open  between  them,  and  making 
an  ostentatious  pretense  of  enjoyment.  Young 
as  I  was,  I  grew  cynical  over  that  title  and 
that  picture,  for  the  torrents  of  tears  that  I 
shed  blotted  them  both  daily  from  my  sight. 
It  might  have  been  possible  for  Cupids,  who 
needed  no  wardrobes  and  sat  comfortably  on 
clouds,  to  like  such  lessons,  but  for  an  or- 
dinary little  girl  in  frock  and  pinafore  they 
were  simply  heart-breaking.  Had  it  only  been 
my  good  fortune  to  be  born  twenty  years  later, 
spelling  would  have  been  left  out  of  my  early 
discipline,  and  I  should  have  found  congenial 
occupation  in  sticking  pins  or  punching  mys- 
terious bits  of  clay  at  a  kindergarten.  But 
when  I  was  young,  the  world  was  still  sadly 
unenlightened  in  those  matters  ;  the  plain 
duty  of  every  child  was  to  learn  how  to  read  ; 
and  the  more  hopelessly  dull  I  showed  my- 
self to  be,  the  more  imperative  became  the 
need  of  forcing  some  information  into  me,  — • 
information  which  I  received  as  responsively 


BOOKS  THAT  HAVE  HINDERED  ME.    67 

as  does  a  Strasbourg  goose  its  daily  share  of 
provender.  For  two  bitter  years  I  had  for  my 
constant  companion  that  hated  reader,  which 
began  with  such  isolated  statements  as  "  Ann 
has  a  cat,"  and  ended  with  a  dismal  story 
about  a  little  African  boy  named  Sam  ;  Mr. 
Eider  Haggard  not  having  then  instructed  us 
as  to  what  truly  remarkable  titles  little  Afri- 
can boys  enjoy.  If,  to  this  day,  I  am  disposed 
to  underrate  the  advantages  of  education,  and 
to  think  but  poorly  of  compulsory  school-laws 
and  the  march  of  mind,  it  is  because  of  the 
unhappy  nature  of  my  own  early  experiences. 
Having  at  last  struggled  into  some  acquaint- 
anceship with  print,  the  next  book  to  which 
I  can  trace  a  moral  downfall  is  "  Sandford 
and  Merton,"  left  on  the  nursery  shelves  by 
an  elder  brother,  and  read  many  times,  not 
because  I  especially  liked  it,  but  because  I 
had  so  little  to  choose  from.  Those  were  not 
days  when  a  glut  of  juvenile  literature  had 
produced  a  corresponding  indifference,  and 
a  spirit  of  languid  hypercriticism.  The  few 
volumes  we  possessed,  even  those  of  a  se- 
verely didactic  order,  were  read  and  re-read, 
until  we  knew  them  well  by  heart.  Now  up 


68  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

to  a  certain  age  I  was,  as  all  healthy  chil- 
dren are,  essentially  democratic,  with  a  de- 
cided preference  for  low  company,  and  a  se- 
cret affinity  for  the  least  desirable  little  girls 
in  the  neighborhood.  But "  Sandf  ord  and  Mer- 
ton  "  wrought  a  pitiable  change.  I  do  not 
think  I  ever  went  so  far  as  to  dislike  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Barlow  after  the  very  cordial  and  hearty 
fashion  in  which  Dickens  disliked  him,  and  I 
know  I  should  have  been  scandalized  by  Mr. 
Burnand's  cheerful  mockery ;  but,  pondering 
over  the  matter  with  the  stolid  gravity  of  a 
child,  I  reached  some  highly  unsatisfactory 
conclusions.  It  did  not  seem  to  me  then,  and 
it  does  not  seem  to  me  now,  exactly  fair  in  the 
estimable  clergyman  to  have  refused  the  board 
which  Mr.  Merton  was  anxious  to  pay,  and 
then  have  reproached  poor  Tommy  so  coldly 
with  eating  the  bread  of  dependence ;  neither 
did  it  seem  worth  while  for  a  wealthy  little 
boy  to  spend  his  time  in  doing  —  very  ineffi- 
ciently, I  am  sure  —  the  work  of  an  under- 
gardener.  Harry's  contempt  for  riches,  and 
his  supreme  satisfaction  with  a  piece  of  bread 
for  dinner,  struck  me  as  overdrawn  ;  Tommy's 
mishaps  were  more  numerous  than  need  be, 


BOOKS  THAT  HAVE  HINDERED  ME.   69 

even  if  lie  did  have  the  misfortune  to  be  a 
gentleman's  son ;  and  the  complacency  with 
which  Mr.  Barlow  permitted  him  to  give  away 
a  whole  suit  of  clothes  —  clothes  which,  ac- 
cording to  my  childish  system  of  ethics,  be- 
longed, not  to  him,  but  to  his  mother  —  con- 
trasted but  poorly  with  the  anxiety  manifested 
by  the  reverend  mentor  over  his  own  pitiful 
loaf  of  bread.  Altogether,  "  Sandford  and 
Merton  "  affected  me  the  wrong  way  ;  and  for 
the  first  time  my  soul  revolted  from  the  pre- 
tentious virtues  of  honest  poverty.  It  is  to 
the  malign  influence  of  that  tale  that  I  owe 
my  sneaking  preference  for  the  drones  and 
butterflies  of  earth.  I  do  not  now  believe  that 
men  are  born  equal ;  I  do  not  love  universal 
suffrage ;  I  mistrust  all  popular  agitators,  all 
intrusive  legislation,  all  philanthropic  fads, 
all  friends  of  the  people  and  benefactors  of 
their  race.  I  cannot  even  sympathize  with 
the  noble  theory  that  every  man  and  woman 
should  do  their  share  of  the  world's  work ;  I 
would  gladly  shirk  my  own  if  I  could.  And 
this  lamentable,  unworthy  view  of  life  and  its 
responsibilities  is  due  to  the  subtle  poison 
instilled  into  my  youthful  mind  by  the  too 


70  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

strenuous  counter-teaching  of  "  Sandford  and 
Merton." 

A  third  pitfall  was  dug  for  my  unwary 
feet  when,  as  a  school-girl  of  fifteen,  I  read, 
sorely  against  my  will,  Milton's  "Areopagit- 
ica."  I  believe  this  is  a  work  highly  esteemed 
by  critics,  and  I  have  even  heard  people  in 
private  life,  who  might  say  what  they  pleased 
without  scandal,  speak  quite  enthusiastically 
of  its  manly  spirit  and  sonorous  rhetoric. 
Perhaps  they  had  the  privilege  of  reading 
it  skippingly  to  themselves,  and  not  as  I 
did,  aloud,  paragraph  after  paragraph,  each 
weighted  with  mighty  sentences,  cumbrous, 
involved,  majestic,  and,  so  far  as  my  narrow 
comprehension  went,  almost  unintelligible. 
Never  can  I  forget  the  aspect  of  those  pages, 
bristling  all  over  with  mysterious  allusions 
to  unknown  people  and  places,  and  with  an 
armed  phalanx  of  Greek  and  Roman  names 
which  were  presumably  familiar  to  my  in- 
structed mind,  but  which  were  really  dug 
out  bodily  from  my  Classical  Dictionary,  at 
the  cost  of  much  time  and  temper.  I  have 
counted  in  one  paragraph,  and  that  a  moder- 
ately short  one,  forty-five  of  these  stumbling- 


BOOKS  THAT  HAVE  HINDERED  ME.   71 

blocks,  ranging  all  the  way  from  the  ''liber- 
tine school  of  Gyrene,"  about  which  I  knew 
nothing,  to  the  no  less  libertine  songs  of  Naso, 
about  which  I  know  nothing  now.  Neither 
was  it  easy  to  trace  the  exact  connection  be- 
tween the  question  at  issue,  "  the  freedom  of 
unlicenc'd  printing,"  and  such  far-off  matters 
as  the  gods  of  Egypt  and  the  comedies  of  Plau- 
tus,  Isaiah's  prophecies  and  the  Carthaginian 
councils.  Erudition,  like  a  bloodhound,  is  a 
charming  thing  when  held  firmly  in  leash, 
but  it  is  not  so  attractive  when  turned  loose 
upon  a  defenseless  and  unerudite  public. 
Lady  Harriet  Ashburton  used  to  say  that, 
when  Macaulay  talked,  she  was  not  only  inun- 
dated with  learning,  but  she  positively  stood 
in  the  slops.  In  reading  Milton,  I  waded 
knee-deep,  utterly  out  of  my  element,  and 
deeply  resentful  of  the  experience.  The  lib- 
erty of  the  press  was,  to  my  American  notions, 
so  much  a  matter  of  course,  that  the  only  way 
I  could  account  for  the  continued  withholding 
of  so  commonplace  a  privilege  was  by  suppos- 
ing that  some  unwary  members  of  Parliament 
read  the  "  Areopagitica,"  and  were  forthwith 
hardened  into  tyranny  forever.  I  own  I  felt 


72  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

a  savage  glee  in  reflecting  that  Lords  and 
Commons  had  received  this  oppressive  bit  of 
literature  in  the  same  aggrieved  spirit  that  I 
had  myself,  and  that  its  immediate  result  was 
to  put  incautious  patriots  in  a  more  ticklish  po- 
sition than  before.  If  truth  now  seems  to  me 
a  sadly  overrated  virtue ;  if  plain-speaking  is 
sure  to  affront  me  ;  if  the  vigorous  personali- 
ties of  the  journalist  and  the  amiable  indecen- 
cies of  the  novel-writer  vex  my  illiberal  soul, 
and  if  the  superficial  precautions  of  a  paternal 
government  appear  estimable  in  my  eyes,  to 
what  can  I  trace  this  alien  and  unprogressive 
attitude,  if  not  to  the  "  Areopagitica,"  and  its 
adverse  influence  over  my  rebellious  and  suf- 
fering girlhood? 

As  these  youthful  reminiscences  are  of  too 
mournful  a  nature  to  be  profitably  prolonged, 
I  will  add  only  two  more  to  the  list  of  books 
which  have  hindered  my  moral  and  intellec- 
tual development.  When  I  was  seventeen,  I 
read,  at  the  earnest  solicitation  of  some  well- 
meaning  friends,  "The  Heir  of  Redclyffe," 
and  my  carefully  guarded  theories  of  life  shiv- 
ered and  broke  before  the  baneful  lesson  it 
conveyed.  Brought  up  on  a  comfortable  and 


BOOKS  THAT  HAVE  HINDERED  ME.   73 

wholesome  diet  of  Miss  Edgeworth's  pleasant 
stories,  I  had  unconsciously  absorbed  the  ge- 
nial doctrine  that  virtue  is  its  own  reward, 
and  that  additional  rewards  are  sure  to  be 
forthcoming;  that  happiness  awaits  the  good 
and  affable  little  girl,  and  that  well-merited 
misfortunes  dog  the  footsteps  of  her  who  in- 
clines to  evil  ways.  I  trusted  implicitly  to 
those  shadowy  mills  where  the  impartial  gods 
grind  out  our  just  deserts ;  and  the  admirable 
songs  in  "Patience"  about  Gentle  Jane  and 
Teasing  Tom  inadequately  express  the  rigid- 
ity of  my  views  and  the  boundless  nature  of 
my  confidence.  u  The  Heir  of  Redclyffe  "  de- 
stroyed, at  once  and  forever,  this  cheerful 
delusion,  and  with  it  a  powerful  stimulus  to 
rectitude.  Here  are  Sir  Guy  Morville  and 
poor  little  Amy,  both  of  them  virtuous  to  a 
degree  which  would  have  put  Miss  Edge- 
worth's  most  exemplary  characters  to  the 
blush;  yet  Guy,  after  being  bullied  and 
badgered  through  the  greater  part  of  his  short 
life,  dies  of  the  very  fever  which  should  prop- 
erly have  carried  off  Philip  ;  and  Amy,  be- 
sides being  left  widowed  and  heart-broken, 
gives  birth  to  a  daughter  instead  of  a  son, 


74  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

and  so  forfeits  the  inheritance  of  Redclyffe. 
On  the  other  hand,  Philip,  the  most  intoler- 
able of  prigs  and  mischief-makers,  whose  cruel 
suspicions  play  havoc  with  the  happiness  of 
everybody  in  the  story,  and  whose  obstinate 
folly  brings  about  the  final  disaster,  —  Philip, 
who  is  little  better  than  his  cousin's  murderer, 
succeeds  to  the  estate,  marries  that  very  stilted 
and  unpleasant  young  person,  Laura  (who  is 
after  all  a  world  too  good  for  him),  and  is 
left  in  a  blaze  of  glory,  a  wealthy,  honored, 
and  distinguished  man.  It  is  true  that  Miss 
Yonge,  whose  conscience  must  have  pricked 
her  a  little  at  bringing  about  this  unwarranted 
and  unjustifiable  conclusion,  would  have  us 
believe  that  he  was  sorry  for  his  misbehavior, 
and  that  his  regret  was  sufficient  to  equalize 
the  perfidious  scales  of  justice;  but  even  at 
seventeen  I  was  not  guileless  enough  to  credit 
the  lasting  quality  of  Philip's  contrition.  A 
very  few  years  would  suffice  to  reconcile  him  to 
Guy's  death,  and  to  convince  him  that  his  own 
succession  was  a  mere  survival  of  the  fittest,  an 
admirable  intervention  on  the  part  of  Destiny 
to  remedy  her  former  blunders,  and  exalt  him 
to  his  proper  station  in  the  world.  But  to 


BOOKS  THAT  HAVE  HINDERED  ME.   75 

me  this  triumph  of  guilt  meant  the  downfall 
of  my  early  creed,  the  destruction  of  my  most 
cherished  convictions.  Never  again  might  I 
look  forward  with  hopeful  heart  to  the  in- 
evitable righting  of  all  wrong  things  ;  never 
again  might  I  trust  with  old-time  confidence 
to  the  final  readjustment  of  a  closing  chapter. 
Even  Emerson's  essay  on  "  Compensation" 
has  failed  to  restore  to  me  the  full  measure 
of  all  that  I  lost  through  the  "  The  Heir  of 
Kedclyffe." 

The  last  work  to  injure  me  seriously  as  a 
girl,  and  to  root  up  the  good  seed  sown  in 
long  years  of  righteous  education,  was  "  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin,"  which  I  read  from  cover  to 
cover  with  the  innocent  credulity  of  youth  ; 
and,  when  I  had  finished,  the  awful  convic- 
tion forced  itself  upon  me  that  the  thirteenth 
amendment  was  a  ghastly  error,  and  that  the 
war  had  been  fought  in  vain.  Slavery,  which 
had  seemed  to  me  before  undeviatingly 
wicked,  now  shone  in  a  new  and  alluring 
light.  All  things  must  be  judged  by  their  re- 
sults, and  if  the  result  of  slavery  was  to  pro- 
duce a  race  so  infinitely  superior  to  common 
humanity ;  if  it  bred  strong,  capable,  self- 


76  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

restrained  men  like  George,  beautiful,  coura- 
geous, tender-hearted  women  like  Eliza,  vi- 
sions of  innocent  loveliness  like  Emmeline ; 
marvels  of  acute  intelligence  like  Gassy,  chil- 
dren of  surpassing  precocity  and  charm  like 
little  Harry,  mothers  and  wives  of  patient, 
simple  goodness  like  Aunt  Chloe,  and,  finally, 
models  of  all  known  chivalry  and  virtue  like 
Uncle  Tom  himself,  —  then  slavery  was  the 
most  ennobling  institution  in  the  world,  and 
we  had  committed  a  grievous  crime  in  de- 
grading a  whole  heroic  race  to  our  narrower, 
viler  level.  It  was  but  too  apparent,  even  to 
my  immature  mind,  that  the  negroes  whom  I 
knew,  or  knew  about,  were  very  little  better 
than  white  people ;  that  they  shared  in  all  the 
manifold  failings  of  humanity,  and  were  not 
marked  by  any  higher  intelligence  than  their 
Caucasian  neighbors.  Even  in  the  matters 
of  physical  beauty  and  mechanical  ingenuity 
there  had  plainly  been  some  degeneracy,  some 
falling  off  from  the  high  standard  of  old  slav- 
ery days.  Reluctantly  I  concluded  that  what 
had  seemed  so  right  had  all  been  wrong  in- 
deed, and  that  the  only  people  who  stood  pre- 
eminent for  virtue,  intellect,  and  nobility  had 


BOOKS  THAT  HAVE  HINDERED  ME.    77 

been  destroyed  by  our  rash  act,  had  sunk 
under  the  enervating  influence  of  freedom  to 
a  range  of  lower  feeling,  to  baser  aspirations 
and  content.  It  was  the  greatest  shock  of 
all,  and  the  last. 

I  will  pursue  the  subject  no  further.  Those 
who  read  these  simple  statements  may  not, 
I  fear,  find  them  as  edifying  or  as  stimulat- 
ing as  the  happier  recollections  of  more  fa- 
vored souls ;  but  it  is  barely  possible  that  they 
may  see  in  them  the  unvarnished  reflection  of 
some  of  their  own  youthful  experiences. 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS. 

THERE  is  a  delightful  little  story,  very  well 
told  by  Mr.  James  Payn,  the  novelist,  about 
an  unfortunate  young  woman  who  for  years 
concealed  in  her  bosom  the  terrible  fact  that 
she  did  not  think  "  John  Gilpin "  funny ; 
and  who  at  last,  in  an  unguarded  moment, 
confessed  to  him  her  guilty  secret,  and  was 
promptly  comforted  by  the  assurance  that,  for 
his  part,  he  had  always  found  it  dull.  The 
weight  that  was  lifted  from  that  girl's  mind 
made  her  feel  for  the  first  time  that  she  was 
living  in  an  age  which  tolerates  freedom  of 
conscience,  and  in  a  land  where  the  Holy 
Office  is  unknown.  It  is  only  to  be  feared 
that  her  newly  acquired  liberty  inclined  her  to 
be  as  much  of  a  Philistine  as  Mr.  Payn  him- 
self, and  to  believe,  with  him,  that  all  ortho- 
doxy is  of  necessity  hypocritical,  and  that 
when  a  man  says  he  admires  the  "Faerie 
Queene,"  or  "  Paradise  Lost,"  or  Rabelais, 
the  chances  are  that  he  knows  little  or  nothing 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  79 

about  them.  Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  sel- 
dom safe  to  judge  others  too  rigidly  by  our  own 
inadequate  standards,  or  to  assume  that  be- 
cause we  prefer  "  InMemoriam  "  to  "  Lycidas," 
our  friend  is  merely  adopting  a  tone  of  griev- 
ous superiority  when  he  modestly  but  firmly 
asserts  his  preference  for  the  earlier  dirge.  It 
is  even  possible  that  although  we  may  find 
"  Don  Quixote  "  dull,  and  "  The  Excursion  " 
vapid,  another  reader,  no  whit  cleverer,  we  are 
sure,  than  ourselves,  may  enjoy  them  both,  with 
honest  laughter  and  with  keen  delight.  There 
is  doubtless  as  much  affectation  in  the  world 
of  books  as  in  the  worlds  of  art  and  fashion  ; 
but  there  must  always  be  a  certain  proportion 
of  men  and  women  who,  whether  by  natural 
instinct  or  acquired  grace,  derive  pleasure 
from  the  highest  ranks  of  literature,  and  who 
should  in  common  justice  be  permitted  to  say 
so,  and  to  return  thanks  for  the  blessings  ac- 
corded them.  "It  is  in  our  power  to  think 
as  we  will,"  says  Marcus  Aurelius,  and  it 
should  be  our  further  privilege  to  give  unfet- 
tered expression  to  our  thoughts. 

Nevertheless,  human   nature   is  weak   and 
erring,  and  the  pitfalls  dug  for  us  by  wily 


80  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

critics  are  baited  with  the  most  ensnaring  de- 
vices. It  is  not  the  great  writers  of  the  world 
who  have  the  largest  following  of  sham  ad- 
mirers, but  rather  that  handful  of  choice 
spirits  who,  we  are  given  to  understand,  ap- 
peal only  to  a  small  and  chosen  band.  Few 
of  us  find  it  worth  our  while  to  pretend  a  pas- 
sionate devotion  for  Shakespeare,  or  Milton, 
or  Dante.  On  the  contrary,  nothing  is  more 
common  than  to  hear  people  complain  that  the 
"  Inferno  "  is  unpleasant,  and  "  Paradise  Lost " 
dreadfully  long,  neither  of  which  charges  is 
easily  refutable  in  terms.  But  when  we  read 
in  a  high-class  review  that  u  just  as  Spenser  is 
the  poet's  poet,  so  Peacock  is  the  delight  of 
critics  and  of  wits  ; "  or  that  "'George  Mere- 
dith, writing  as  he  does  for  an  essentially  cul- 
tivated and  esoteric  audience,  has  won  but  a 
limited  recognition  for  his  brilliant  group  of 
novels  ;  "  or  that  "  the  subtle  and  far-reaching 
excellence  of  Ibsen's  dramatic  work  is  a  quality 
absolutely  undecipherable  to  the  groundlings," 
who  can  resist  tendering  his  allegiance  on  the 
spot  ?  It  is  not  in  the  heart  of  man  to  harden 
itself  against  the  allurements  of  that  magic 
word  "  esoteric,"  nor  to  be  indifferent  to  the 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  81 

distinction  it  conveys.  Mr.  Payn,  indeed,  in 
a  robust  spirit  of  contradiction,  has  left  it  on 
record  that  he  found  "  Headlong  Hall"  and 
"Crotchet  Castle"  intolerably  dull ;  but  this  I 
believe  to  have  been  an  unblushing  falsehood, 
in  the  case  of  the  latter  story,  at  least.  It  is 
hardly  within  the  bounds  of  possibility  that  a 
man  blessed  with  so  keen  a  sense  of  humor 
could  have  found  the  Rev.  Dr.  Folliott  dull ; 
but  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  average  reader, 
whose  humorous  perceptions  are  of  a  some- 
what restricted  nature,  should  find  Mr.  Peacock 
enigmatic,  and  the  oppressive  brilliancy  of  Mr. 
Meredith's  novels  a  heavy  load  to  bear.  There 
is  such  a  thing  as  being  intolerably  clever, 
and  "Evan  Harrington"  and  "The  Egoist" 
are  fruitful  examples  of  the  fact.  The  mind 
is  kept  on  a  perpetual  strain,  lest  some  fine 
play  of  words,  some  elusive  witticism,  should 
be  disregarded ;  the  sense  of  continued  effort 
paralyzes  enjoyment ;  fatigue  provokes  in  us 
an  ignoble  spirit  of  contrariety,  and  we  sigh 
perversely  for  that  serene  atmosphere  of  dull- 
ness which  in  happier  moments  we  affected  to 
despise. 

"  A  man,"  says  Dr.  Johnson  bluntly,  "  ought 


82  POINTS  OF  VIEW. 

to  read  just  as  inclination  leads  him,  for  what 
he  reads  as  a  task  will  do  him  little  good." 
In  other  words,  if  his  taste  is  for  Mr.  Rider 
Haggard's  ingenious  tales,  it  is  hardly  worth 
his  while  to  pretend  that  he  prefers  Tolstoi. 
His  more  enlightened  brother  will  indeed  pass 
him  by  with  a  shiver  of  pained  surprise,  but 
he  has  the  solid  evidence  of  the  booksellers 
to  prove  that  he  is  not  sitting  alone  in  his 
darkness.  Yet  nowadays  the  critic  diverts 
his  heaviest  scorn  from  the  guilty  author,  who 
does  not  mind  it  at  all,  to  the  sensitive  reader, 
who  minds  it  a  great  deal  too  much  ;  and  the 
result  is  that  cowardice  prompts  a  not  unnat- 
ural deception.  Few  of  us  remember  what 
Dr.  Johnson  chanced  to  say  on  the  subject, 
and  fewer  still  are  prepared  to  solace  ourselves 
with  his  advice ;  but  when  an  unsparing  dis- 
ciplinarian like  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  lays 
down  the  law  with  a  chastening  hand,  we  are 
all  of  us  aroused  to  a  speedy  and  bitter  con- 
sciousness of  our  deficiencies.  "  The  incor- 
rigible habit  of  reading  little  books "  —  a 
habit,  one  might  say,  analogous  to  that  of  eat- 
ing common  food  —  meets  with  scant  tolerance 
at  the  hands  of  this  inexorable  reformer.  Bet- 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  83 

ter,  far  better,  never  to  read  at  all,  and  so 
keep  the  mind  "  open  and  healthy,"  than  be 
betrayed  into  seeking  "desultory  information" 
from  the  rank  and  file  of  literature.  To 
be  simply  entertained  by  a  book  is  an  unpar- 
donable sin  ;  to  be  gently  instructed  is  very 
little  better.  In  fact,  Mr.  Harrison  carries 
his  severity  to  such  a  pitch  that,  on  reach- 
ing this  humiliating  but  comforting  sentence, 
"  Systematic  reading,  in  its  true  sense,  is 
hardly  possible  for  women,"  it  was  with  a 
feeble  gasp  of  relief  that  I  realized  our  igno- 
minious exclusion  from  the  race.  I  do  not 
see  why  systematic  reading  should  be  hardly 
possible  for  women,  any  more  than  I  see  what 
is  to  become  of  Mr.  Harrison  if  we  are  to  give 
up  little  books,  but  never  before  did  the  limi- 
tations of  sex  appear  in  so  friendly  a  light. 
1  There  is  something  frightful  in  being  required 
to  enjoy  and  appreciate  all  masterpieces ;  to 
read  with  equal  relish  Milton,  and  Dante,  and 
Calderon,  and  Goethe,  and  Homer,  and  Scott, 
and  Voltaire,  and  Wordsworth,  and  Cer- 
vantes, and  Moliere,  and  Swift.  One  is  ir- 
resistibly reminded  of  Mrs.  Blimber  surveying 
the  infant  Paul  Doinbey.  "  Like  a  bee,"  she 


84  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

murmured,  "  about  to  plunge  into  a  garden  of 
the  choicest  flowers,  and  sip  the  sweets  for  the 
first  time.  Virgil,  Horace,  Ovid,  Terence, 
Plautus,  Cicero.  What  a  world  of  honey  have 
we  here  !  "  And  what  a  limited  appetite  and 
digestion  awaited  them  !  After  all,  these  great 
men  did  not  invariably  love  one  another,  even 
when  they  had  the  chance.  Goethe,  for  in- 
stance, hated  Dante,  and  Scott  very  cordially 
disliked  him  ;  Voltaire  had  scant  sympathy 
with  "  Paradise  Lost,"  and  Wordsworth  fo- 
cused his  true  affection  upon  the  children  of 
his  own  pen. 

It  is  very  amusing  to  see  the  position  now 
assigned  by  critics  to  that  arch  -  offender, 
Charles  Lamb,  who,  himself  the  idlest  of 
readers,  had  no  hesitation  in  commending  the 
same  unscrupulous  methods  to  his  friends. 
We  are  told  in  one  breath  of  his  unerring  lit- 
erary judgment,  and,  in  the  next,  are  solemnly 
warned  against  accepting  that  judgment  as 
our  own.  He  is  the  most  quoted,  because  the 
most  quotable  of  writers,  yet  every  one  who 
uses  his  name  seems  faintly  displeased  at  hear- 
ing it  upon  another's  lips.  I  have  myself 
been  reminded  with  some  sharpness,  by  a  re- 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  85 

viewer,  that  illustrations  drawn  from  Lamb 
counted  for  nothing  in  my  argument,  because 
his  was  "  a  unique  personality,"  a  "  pure  ima- 
gination, which  even  the  drama  of  the  Restora- 
tion could  not  pollute."  But  this  seems  to  be 
assuming  more  than  we  have  any  right  to  as- 
sume. I  cannot  take  it  upon  myself  to  say, 
for  example,  that  Mr.  Bagehot's  mind  was 
more  susceptible  to  pollution  than  Charles 
Lamb's.  I  am  not  sufficiently  in  the  secrets 
of  Providence  to  decide  upon  so  intimate  and 
delicate  a  question.  But  granted  that  others 
have  a  clearer  light  on  these  matters  than  I 
have,  it  would  still  appear  as  though  the  un- 
polluted source  were  the  best  from  which  to 
draw  one's  help  and  inspiration.  What  really 
makes  Lamb  a  doubtful  guide  through  the 
mazes  of  literature  is  the  fact  that  there  is  not 
a  single  rule  given  us  in  these  sober  days  for 
the  proper  administration  of  our  faculties 
which  he  did  not  take  a  positive  pleasure  in 
transgressing.  His  often-quoted  heresy  in  re- 
gard to  those  volumes  which  "  no  gentleman's 
library  should  be  without "  might  perhaps  be 
spared  the  serious  handling  it  receives  ;  but 
his  letters  abound  in  passages  equally  shame- 


86  POINTS   OF   VIEW, 

less  and  perverting.  "  I  feel  as  if  I  had  read 
all  the  books  I  want  to  read,"  he  writes  un- 
concernedly ;  and  again,  "  I  take  less  pleasure 
in  reading  than  heretofore,  but  I  like  books 
about  books."  And  so,  alas !  do  we  ;  though 
this  is  the  most  serious  charge  laid  at  our 
doors,  and  one  which  has  subjected  us  to  the 
most  humiliating  reproofs.  It  is  very  pleasant 
to  have  Mr.  Ainger  tell  us  what  an  admirable 
critic  Lamb  was,  and  with  what  unerring  cer- 
tainty he  pointed  out  the  best  lines  of  Words- 
worth and  Southey  and  Coleridge.  The  fact 
remains  —  though  to  this  Mr.  Ainger  does 
not  draw  our  attention  —  that  he  found  no- 
thing to  praise  in  Byron,  heartily  disliked 
Shelley,  never,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  read 
Keats,  condemned  Faust  unhesitatingly  as  "  a 
disagreeable,  canting  tale  of  seduction,"  and 
discovered  strong  points  of  resemblance  be- 
tween Southey  and  Milton.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances, it  is  hardly  safe  to  elect  him  as  a 
critical  fetich,  if  we  feel  the  need  of  such  an  ar- 
ticle, merely  because  he  admired  the  "  Ancient 
Mariner  "  and  Blake's  "  Chimney  Sweeper," 
and  did  not  particularly  admire  "  We  are 
Seven."  Even  his  fine  and  subtle  sympathy 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  87 

with  Shakespeare  is  a  thing  to  be  revered  and 
envied,  rather  than  analyzed  and  drawn  into 
service,  where  it  will  answer  little  purpose.  But 
what  is  none  the  less  sure  is  that  Lamb  recog- 
nized by  a  swift  and  delicate  intuition  the  lit- 
erary food  that  was  best  fitted  to  nourish  his 
own  intellectual  growth.  This  was  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott's  secret,  and  this  was  Lamb's.  Both 
knew  instinctively  what  was  good  for  them, 
and  a  clear  perception  of  our  individual  needs 
is  something  vastly  different  from  idle  pref- 
erence based  on  an  ignorant  conceit.  It  is 
what  we  have  each  of  us  to  learn,  if  we  would 
hope  to  thrive  ;  and  while  we  may  be  aided  in 
the  effort,  yet  a  general  command  to  read  and 
enjoy  all  great  authors  seldom  affords  us  the 
precise  assistance  we  require. 

Still  less  do  we  derive  any  real  help  from 
those  more  contentious  critics  who,  being 
wedded  hard  and  fast  to  one  particular  author 
or  to  one  particular  school  of  thought,  refuse, 
with  ostentatious  continency,  to  cast  lingering 
looks  upon  any  other  type  of  loveliness.  Lit- 
erary monogamy,  as  practiced  by  some  of  our 
contemporaries,  makes  us  sigh  for  the  old  ge- 
nial days  of  Priest  Martin,  when  the  tyranny 


88  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

of  opinions  had  not  yet  grown  into  a  binding 
yoke,  and  when  it  was  still  possible  to  follow 
the  example  of  Montaigne's  old  woman,  and 
light  one  candle  to  Saint  Michael  and  another 
to  the  Dragon.  At  present,  the  saint  —  or 
perhaps  the  dragon  —  stands  in  a  blaze  of 
glory,  all  the  more  lustrous  for  the  dark 
shadow  thrown  on  his  antagonist.  "Praise 
handed  in  by  disparagement,"  the  Greek  drama 
whipped  upon  the  back  of  Genesis,  —  if  I 
may  venture  to  quote  Charles  Lamb  again  — 
this  is  the  modern  method  of  procedure,  a 
method  successfully  inaugurated  by  Macaulay, 
who  could  find  no  better  way  of  eulogizing 
Addison  than  by  heaping  antithetical  re- 
proaches upon  Steele.  In  a  little  volume  of 
lectures  upon  Russian  literature,  lectures 
which  were  sufficiently  popular  to  bear  both 
printing  and  delivery,  I  find  the  art  of  per- 
suasiveness illustrated  by  this  firebrand  of  a 
sentence,  hurled  like  an  anathema  at  the  heads 
of  a  peaceful  and  unoffending  community : 
"  Read  Tolstoi !  Read  humbly,  read  admir- 
ingly !  Reading  him  in  this  spirit  shall  in 
itself  be  unto  you  an  education  of  your  highest 
artistic  nature.  And  when  your  souls  have 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  89 

become  able  to  be  thrilled  to  their  very  depths 
by  the  unspeakable  beauty  of  Tolstoi's  art, 
you  will  then  learn  to  be  ashamed  of  the 
thought  that  for  years  you  sensible  folks  of 
Boston  have  been  capable  of  allowing  the  Ste- 
vensons'with  their  Hydes,  and  the  Haggards 
with  their  Shes,  and  even  the  clumsy  Wards 
with  their  ponderous  Elsmeres,  to  steal  away, 
under  the  flag  of  literature,  your  thoughtful 
moments," 

Now,  apart  from  the  delightful  vagueness  of 
perspective,  —  for  "  Robert  Elsmere  "  and 
"  She  "  grouping  themselves  amicably  together 
is  a  spectacle  too  pleasant  to  be  lost,  —  I  can- 
not but  think  that  there  is  something  oppres- 
sive about  the  form  in  which  these  comments 
are  offered  to  the  world.  It  reminds  one  of 
that  highly  dramatic  scene  in  Bulwer's  "  Riche- 
lieu," where  the  aged  cardinal  hurls  "  the  curse 
of  Rome  "  at  a  whole  stageful  of  people,  who 
shrink  and  cower  without  knowing  very  dis- 
tinctly at  what.  Why  should  critics,  I  won- 
der, always  adopt  this  stringent  and  defiant 
tone  when  they  would  beguile  us  to  the  enjoy- 
ment of  Russian  fiction  ?  Why  should  the 
reading  of  Tolstoi  necessarily  imply  a  con- 


90  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

tempt  for  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  ?  Why, 
when  we  have  been  "  thrilled  to  our  very 
depths "  by  "  Peace  and  War  "  or  "  Anna 
Karenina,"  should  we  not  devote  a  few  spare 
moments  to  the  consideration  of  "  Markheim," 
a  story  whose  solemn  intensity  of  purpose  in 
no  way  mars  its  absolute  and  artistic  beauty  ? 
And  why,  above  all,  should  we  be  petulantly 
reprimanded,  like  so  many  stupid  and  obsti- 
nate children  ?  I  cannot  even  think  that  Mr. 
Howells  is  justified  in  calling  the  English 
nation  "  those  poor  islanders,"  as  if  they 
were  dancing  naked  somewhere  in  the  South 
Seas,  merely  because  they  love  George  Eliot 
and  Thackeray  as  well  as  Jane  Austen. 
They  love  Jane  Austen  too.  We  all  love 
her  right  heartily,  but  we  have  no  need  to  em- 
ulate good  Queen  Anne,  who,  as  Swift  ob- 
served, had  not  a  sufficient  stock  of  amity  for 
more  than  one  person  at  a  time.  We  may 
not,  indeed,  be  prepared  to  say  with  Mr. 
Howells  that  Miss  Austen  is  "  the  first  and 
the  last  of  the  English  novelists  to  treat  mate- 
rial with  entire  truthfulness,"  having  some 
reasonable  doubts  as  to  the  precise  definition 
of  truth.  We  may  not  care  to  emphasize  or~ 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  91 

affection  for  her  by  repudiating  with  one 
breath  all  her  great  successors.  We  may  not 
even  consider  "  The  Newcomes  "  and  "  Henry 
Esmond"  as  illustrating  the  degeneracy  of 
modern  fiction  ;  yet  nevertheless  we  may  en- 
joy some  fair  half -hours  in  the  company  of 
Emma  Woodhouse  and  Mr.  Elton,  of  Cath- 
erine Morland  and  Elizabeth  Bennet.  Only, 
when  we  are  searching  for  a  shibboleth  by 
which  to  test  our  neighbor's  intellectual  worth, 
let  not  Jane  Austen's  be  the  name,  lest  we  be 
rewarded  for  our  trouble  by  hearing  the  faint, 
clear  ripple  of  her  amused  laughter  —  that 
gentle,  feminine,  merciless  laughter  —  echoing 
softly  from  the  dwelling-place  of  the  immortals. 
It  is  inevitable,  moreover,  that  too  much 
rigidity  on  the  part  of  teachers  should  be  fol- 
lowed by  a  brisk  spirit  of  insubordination 
on  the  part  of  the  taught.  Accordingly,  now 
and  then,  some  belligerent  freeman  rushes 
into  print,  and  shakes  our  souls  by  declaring 
"breathlessly  that  he  hates  "  Wagner,  and  Mr. 
Irving,  and  the  Elgin  Marbles,  and  Goethe, 
and  Leonardo  da  Vinci ; "  and  this  rank 
socialism  in  literature  and  art  receives  a  very 
solid  and  shameless  support  from  the  more 


92  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

light-minded  writers  of  the  day.  Mr.  Birrell, 
for  instance,  fails  to  see  why  the  man  who 
liked  Montgomery's  poetry  should  have  been 
driven  away  from  it  by  Macaulay's  stormy 
rhetoric,  nor  why  Macatilay  himself  could  not 
have  let  poor  Montgomery  alone,  nor  why 
"  some  cowardly  fellow "  should  join  in  the 
common  laugh  at  Tupper,  when  he  knows 
very  well  that  in  his  secret  soul  he  much  pre- 
fers the  "  Proverbial  Philosophy  "  to  "  Ata- 
lanta  in  Calydon  "  or  "  Empedocles  on  Etna." 
A  recent  contributor  to  Macmillan  assures  us, 
with  discouraging  candor,  that  it  is  all  vanity 
to  educate  ourselves  into  admiring  Turner, 
and  that  it  is  not  worth  while  to  try  and 
like  the  "  Mahabharata  "  or  the  "  Origin  of 
Species,"  if  we  really  enjoy  "  King  Solomon's 
Mines "  or  the  "  Licensed  Victualler's  Ga- 
zette." On  the  other  hand,  we  have  Ruskin's 
word  for  it  that  unless  we  love  Turner  with 
our  whole  hearts  we  shall  not  be  —  artistically 
speaking  —  saved  ;  and  hosts  of  strenuous  crit- 
ics in  the  field  of  letters  are  each  and  every 
one  assuring  us  that  there  is  no  intellectual 
future  for  the  world  unless  we  speedily  ten- 
der our  allegiance  wherever  he  says  it  is  due. 


,  UNIVERSITY 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  93 

Poet-censors,  like  Mr.  Swinburne,  whose  words 
are  bitterness  and  whose  charity  is  small,  lay 
crooked  yokes  upon  our  galled  necks.  Even 
the  story-tellers  have  now  turned  reviewers  on 
their  own  account,  and  gravely  tell  us  how 
many  novels,  besides  their  own,  we  should  feel 
ourselves  at  liberty  to  read. 

Under  these  circumstances,  it  is  hardly  a 
matter  of  surprise  that  people  whose  minds 
are,  as  Mr.  Bagehot  termed  it,  "  to  let  "  stand 
hesitating  between  license  and  servitude.  On 
the  one  side,  we  hear  men  —  intelligent  men, 
too  —  boasting  that  they  never  read  anything 
but  the  newspapers,  and  seeming  to  take  a 
perverted  pride  in  their  own  melancholy 
deprivation.  On  the  other,  we  see  both  men 
and  women,  and  sometimes  even  children, 
practicing  a  curious  sort  of  literary  asceticism, 
and  devoting  themselves  conscientiously  and 
very  conspicuously  to  the  authors  they  least 
enjoy.  These  martyrs  to  an  advanced  culti- 
vation find  their  self-imposed  tasks,  I  am 
happy  to  think,  grow  harder  year  by  year. 
Helen  Pendennis,  occasionally  reading  Shake- 
speare, "  whom  she  pretended  to  like,  but 
didn't,"  had  comparatively  an  easy  time  of 


94  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

it ;  but  her  successor  to-day  who  goes  to  a 
lecture  on  Hegel  or  Euripides  when  she  would 
prefer  cards  and  conversation ;  who  sits,  per- 
plexed and  doubtful,  through  a  performance 
of  "A  Doll's  House"  when  " Little  Lord 
Fauntleroy"  represents  her  dramatic  prefer- 
ence ;  who  tries  to  read  Matthew  Arnold  and 
Tourgueneff,  and  now  and  then  Mr.  Pater, 
when  she  really  enjoys  Owen  Meredith, 
and  "  Booties'  Baby,"  and  the  Duchess, 
pays  a  heavy  price  for  her  enviable  reputation. 
"  The  true  value  of  souls  is  in  proportion  to 
what  they  can  admire,"  says  Marius  the 
Epicurean  ;  but  the  true  value  of  our  friends' 
distinction  is  in  proportion  to  the  books  we 
behold  in  their  hands.  We  have  hardly  yet 
outgrown  the  critical  methods  of  the  little 
heroine  of  "  Mademoiselle  Panache,"  who 
knows  that  Lady  Augusta  is  accomplished 
because  she  has  seen  her  music  and  heard  of 
her  drawings ;  and,  as  few  of  us  resemble 
the  late  Mr.  Mark  Pattison  in  his  unwilling- 
ness to  create  a  good  impression,  we  naturally 
make  an  effort  to  be  taken  at  our  best.  Mr. 
Payn  once  said  that  Macaulay  had  frightened 
thousands  into  pretending  they  knew  authors 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  95 

with  whom  they  had  not  even  a  bowing  ac- 
quaintance ;  and  though  the  days  of  his  au- 
tocracy are  over,  it  has  been  succeeded  by 
a  more  fastidious  and  stringent  legislation. 
We  no  longer  feel  it  incumbent  upon  us  to 
profess  an  intimacy  with  Thucydides,  nor  to 
revere  the  "Pilgrim's  Progress."  Indeed,  a 
recent  critic  has  been  found  brave  enough  to 
speak  harsh  words  concerning  the  Delectable 
Mountains  and  the  Valley  of  Humiliation,  — 
words  that  would  have  frozen  the  current  of 
Macaulay's  blood,  and  startled  even  the  tol- 
erant Sainte-Beuve,  weary  as  he  confessed 
himself  of  the  Pilgrim's  vaunted  perfections. 
But  there  is  always  a  little  assortment  of 
literary  shibboleths,  whose  names  we  con  over 
with  careful  glibness,  that  we  may  assert  our 
intimacy  in  hours  of  peril ;  nor  should  we, 
in  justice,  be  censured  very  severely  for  doing 
what  is  too  often  with  us,  as  with  the  Ephra- 
imites,  a  deed  of  simple  self-defense. 

These  passwords  of  culture,  although  their 
functions  remain  always  the  same,  vary 
greatly  with  each  succeeding  generation ; 
and,  as  they  make  room  in  turn  for  one  an- 
other, they  give  to  the  true  and  modest  lovers 


96  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

of  an  author  a  chance  to  enjoy  him  in  peace. 
Wordsworth  is  now,  for  example,  the  cher- 
ished friend  of  a  tranquil  and  happy  band, 
who  read  him  placidly  in  green  meadows  or 
by  their  own  firesides,  and  forbear  to  trouble 
themselves  about  the  obstinate  blindness  of 
the  disaffected.  But  there  was  a  time  when 
battles  royal  were  fought  over  his  fame,  owing 
principally,  if  not  altogether,  to  the  insulting 
pretensions  of  his  followers.  It  was  then  con- 
sidered a  correct  and  seemly  thing  to  vaunt 
his  peculiar  merits,  as  if  they  reflected  a  shad- 
owy grandeur  upon  all  who  praised  them, 
very  much  in  the  spirit  of  the  little  Austra- 
lian boy  who  said  to  Mr.  Froude,  "  Don't 
you  think  the  harbor  of  Sydney  does  us  great 
credit  ?  "  To  which  the  historian's  characteris- 
tic reply  was,  "  It  does,  my  dear,  if  you  made 
it."  Apart  from  the  prolonged  and  point- 
less discussion  of  Wordsworth's  admirable 
moral  qualities,  "  as  though  he  had  been  the 
candidate  for  a  bishopric,"  there  was  always 
a  delicately  implied  claim  on  the  part  of  his 
worshipers  that  they  possessed  finer  percep- 
tions than  their  neighbors,  that  they  were  in 
some  incomprehensible  way  open  to  influences 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  97 

which  revealed  nothing  to  less  subtle  and  dis- 
criminating souls.  The  same  tone  of  heart- 
felt superiority  is  noticeable  among  the  very 
ardent  admirers  of  Robert  Browning,  who 
seem  to  be  perpetually  offering  thanks  to 
Heaven  that  they  are  not  as  other  men,  and 
who  evince  a  gentle  but  humiliating  contempt 
for  their  uninitiated  fellow-creatures ;  while 
Ibsen's  fervent  devotees  dwell  on  the  moun- 
tain tops  apart.  How  many  people,  I  wonder, 
who  believe  that  they  have  loved  Shelley  all 
their  lives,  find  themselves  exceedingly  dazed 
and  harassed  by  what  Mr.  Freeman  calls  "  the 
snares  of  Shelley  ana,"  a  mist  of  confusing 
chatter  and  distorted  praise  !  How  many  un- 
ambitious readers,  who  would  fain  enjoy  their 
Shakespeare  quietly,  are  pursued  even  to  their 
peaceful  chimney-corners  by  the  perfidious 
devices  of  commentators  and  of  cranks !  In 
the  mean  while,  an  experienced  few  ally  them- 
selves, with  supreme  but  transient  enthusiasm, 
to  Frederic  Mistral  or  to  Pushkin,  to  Omar 
Khayyam  or  to  Amiel ;  and  an  inexperienced 
many  strive  falteringly  to  believe  that  they 
were  acquainted  with  the  Rubaiyat  before  the 
date  of  Mr.  Vedder's  illustrations,  and  that 


98  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

the  diary  of  a  half -Germanized  Frenchman, 
submerged  in  a  speculative  and  singularly 
cheerless  philosophy,  represents  the  intellec- 
tual food  for  which  their  souls  are  craving. 

The  object  of  criticism,  it  has  been  said,  is 
to  supply  the  world  with  a  basis,  a  definition 
which  cannot  be  accused  of  lacking  sufficient 
liberality  and  breadth.  Yet,  after  applying 
the  principle  for  a  good  many  years,  it  is  dis- 
couraging to  note  that  what  has  really  been 
afforded  us  is  less  a  basis  than  a  battlefield, 
the  din  and  tumult  from  which  strike  a  dis- 
cordant note  in  our  lives.  That  somewhat 
contemptuous  severity  with  which  critics  ad- 
dress the  general  public,  and  which  the  gen- 
eral public  very  stoutly  resents,  is  urbanity 
itself  when  compared  with  the  language  which 
they  feel  themselves  privileged  to  use  to  one 
another.  Senor  Armando  Palacio  Vald^s,  for 
example,  who  has  been  recently  presented  to 
us  as  a  clear  beacon-light  to  guide  our  wan- 
dering steps,  has  no  hesitation  in  saying  that 
"  among  the  vulgar,  of  course"  he  includes 
"  the  greater  part  of  those  who  write  literary 
criticism,  and  who  constitute  the  worst  vulgar, 
since  they  teach  what  they  do  not  know." 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  99 

But  this  is  the  kind  of  thing  that  is  very  easy 
to  say,  and  carries  110  especial  weight  when 
said.  The  uof  course"  adds,  indeed,  a  faint 
flavor  of  unconscious  huinor  to  the  enviable 
complacency  of  the  whole,  and  there  is  always 
a  certain  satisfaction  to  a  generous  soul  in  the 
sight  of  a  fellow-mortal  so  thoroughly  enjoy- 
ing the  altitude  to  which  he  believes  he  has 
risen. 

"  Let  us  sit  on  the  thrones 
In  a  purple  sublimity, 
And  grind  down  men's  bones 
To  a  pale  unanimity," 

sings  Mrs.  Browning  in  one  of  her  less  lumi- 
nous moments ;  and  Seiior  Valde*s  and  his 
friends  respond  with  alacrity,  "  We  will ! " 
Unhappily,  however,  "  the  greater  part  of 
those  who  write  literary  criticism,"  while  per- 
haps no  more  vulgar  than  their  neighbors9  are 
not  generous  enough  nor  humorous  enough  to 
appreciate  the  delicate  irony  of  the  situation. 
They  rush  forward  to  protest  with  energetic 
ill  temper,  and  the  air  is  dark  with  warfare. 
Alas  for  those  who  succeed,  as  Montaigne  ob- 
served, in  giving  to  their  harmless  opinions  a 
fatal  air  of  importance  !  Alas  for  those  who 


100  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

tilt  with  irrational  chivalry  at  all  that  man 
holds  dear !  How  many  years  have  passed 
since  Saint-Evremond  uttered  his  cynical  pro- 
test against  the  unprofitable  wisdom  of  re- 
formers ;  and  to-day,  when  one  half  the  world 
devotes  itself  strenuously  to  tlie  correction  and 
improvement  of  the  other  half,  what  is  the 
result,  save  pretense,  and  contention,  and  a 
dismal  consciousness  of  insecurity  !  More 
and  more  do  we  sigh  for  greater  harmony  and 
repose  in  the  intellectual  life  ;  more  and  more 
do  we  respect  the  tranquil  sobriety  of  that 
wise  old  worldling,  Lord  Chesterfield,  who 
counsels  every  man  to  think  as  he  pleases,  or 
rather  as  he  can,  but  to  forbear  to  disclose  his 
valuable  ideas  when  they  are  of  a  kind  to  dis- 
turb the  peace  of  society. 

In  reading  the  recently  published  letters  of 
Edward  Fitzgerald,  we  cannot  fail  to  be  struck 
with  the  amount  of  unmixed  pleasure  he  de- 
rived from  his  books,  merely  because  he  ap- 
proached them  with  such  instinctive  honesty 
and  singleness  of  purpose.  He  was  perfectly 
frank  in  his  satisfaction,  and  he  was  wholly 
innocent  of  any  didactic  tendency.  Those 
subjects  which  he  confessed  he  enjoyed  be- 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  101 

cause  he  only  partly  understood  them,  "  just 
as  the  old  women  love  sermons,"  he  refrained 
from  interpreting  to  his  friends  ;  those  "  large, 
still  books,"  like  "  Clarissa  Harlowe,"  for 
which  he  shared  all  Tennyson's  enthusiasm,  he 
forbore  to  urge  upon  less  leisurely  readers. 
And  what  a  world  of  meaning  in  that  single 
line,  "  For  human  delight,  Shakespeare,  Cer- 
vantes, and  Scott  "  !  For  human  delight ! 
The  words  sound  like  a  caress ;  a  whole  sunny 
vista  opens  before  us  ;  idleness  and  pleasure 
lure  us  gently  on ;  a  warm  and  mellow  at- 
mosphere surrounds  us  ;  we  are  invited,  not 
driven,  to  be  happy.  I  cannot  but  compare 
Fitzgerald  reading  Scott,  "  for  human  de- 
light," in  the  quiet  winter  evenings,  with  a 
very  charming  old  gentleman  whom  I  recently 
saw  working  conscientiously  —  so  I  thought  — 
through  Tolstoi's  "  Peace  and  War."  He 
sighed  a  little  when  he  spoke  to  me,  and  held 
up  the  book  for  inspection.  "My  daughter- 
in-law  sent  it  to  me,"  he  explained  resignedly, 
"  and  said  I  must  be  sure  and  read  it.  But," 
—  this  with  a  sudden  sense  of  gratitude  and 
deliverance,  —  "  thank  Heaven  !  one  volume 
was  lost  on  the  way."  Now  we  have  Mr.  An- 


102  POINTS   OF    VIEW. 

drew  Lang's  word  for  it  that  the  Englishmen 
of  to-day,  "  those  poor  islanders,"  indeed,  are 
better  acquainted  with  "  Anna  Karenina  "  than 
with  "The  Fortunes  of  Nigel,"  and  we  cannot 
well  doubt  the  assertion,  in  view  of  the  too  man- 
ifest regret  with  which  it  is  uttered.  But  then 
nobody  reads  "  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel  "  because 
he  has  been  told  to  read  it,  nor  because  his 
neighbors  are  reading  it,  nor  because  he  wants 
to  say  that  he  has  read  it.  The  hundred  and 
one  excellent  reasons  for  becoming  acquainted 
with  Tolstoi  or  Ibsen  resolve  themselves  into 
a  single  motive  when  we  turn  to  Scott.  It  is 
"  for  human  delight "  or  nothing.  And  if, 
even  to  children,  this  joy  has  grown  somewhat 
tasteless  of  late  years,  I  fear  the  reason  lies  in 
their  lack  of  healthy  unconsciousness.  They 
are  taught  so  much  they  did  not  use  to  know 
about  the  correct  standing  of  authors,  they 
are  so  elaborately  directed  in  their  recreations 
as  well  as  in  their  studies,  that  the  old  simple 
charm  of  self-forgetful  absorption  in  a  book 
seems  well-nigh  lost  to  them.  It  is  not  very 
encouraging  to  see  a  bright  little  girl  of  ten 
making  believe  she  enjoys  Miss  Austen's 
novels,  and  to  hear  her  mother's  complacent 


LITERARY  SHIBBOLETHS.  103 

comments  thereon,  when  we  realize  how  ex- 
clusively the  fine,  thin  perfection  of  Miss  Aus- 
ten's work  appeals  to  the  mature  observation 
of  men  and  women,  and  how  utterly  out  of  har- 
mony it  must  be  with  the  crude  judgment  and 
expansive  ideality  of  a  child.  I  am  willing 
to  believe  that  these  abnormally  clever  little 
people,  who  read  grown-up  books  so  conspicu- 
ously in  public,  love  their  Shakespeares,  and 
their  Grecian  histories,  and  their  "  Idylls  of 
the  King."  I  have  seen  literature  of  the  del- 
icately elusive  order,  like  "  The  Marble  Faun," 
and  "  Elsie  Venner,"  and  "  Lamia,"  devoured 
with  a  wistful  eagerness  that  plainly  revealed 
the  awakened  imagination  responding  with 
quick  delight  to  the  sweet  and  subtle  charm  of 
mystery.  But  I  am  impelled  to  doubt  the 
attractiveness  of  Thackeray  to  the  youthful 
mind,  even  when  I  have  just  been  assured  that 
"  Henry  Esmond  "  is  "  a  lovely  story  ;  "  and  I 
am  still  more  skeptical  as  to  Miss  Austen's 
marvelous  hair-strokes  conveying  any  meaning 
at  all  to  the  untrained  faculties  of  a  child. 
Can  it  be  that  our  boys  and  girls  have  learned 
from  Emerson  and  Carlyle  not  to  wish  to  be 
amused  ?  Or  is  genuine  amusement  so  rare 


104  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

that,  like  Mr.  Payn's  young  friend,  they  have 
grown  reconciled  to  a  pretended  sensation,  and 
strive  dutifully  to  make  the  most  of  it?  Alas ! 
such  pretenses  are  not  always  the  facile  things 
they  seem,  and  if  a  book  is  ever  to  become 
a  friend  to  either  young  or  old,  it  must  be 
treated  with  that  simple  integrity  on  which  all 
lasting  amity  is  built.  "Read,  not  to  con- 
tradict and  confute,"  says  Lord  Bacon,  "  nor 
to  believe  and  take  for  granted,  nor  to  find 
talk  and  discourse ; "  and,  in  the  delicate 
irony  of  this  advice,  we  discern  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  philosopher  in  having  deprived  the 
mass  of  mankind  of  the  only  motives  which 
prompt  them  to  read  at  all. 


FICTION   IN  THE  PULPIT. 

ONE  of  the  most  curious  and  depressing 
things  about  our  modern  literary  criticism  is 
the  tendency  it  has  to  slide  into  an  ethical 
criticism  before  we  know  what  to  expect. 
We  go  to  a  Browning  Society,  for  example,  — 
at  least  some  of  us  who  are  stout-hearted 
go,  —  presumably  to  hear  about  Mr.  Brown- 
ing's poetry.  What  we  do  hear  about  are  his 
ethics.  Insinuate  a  doubt  as  to  the  artistic  set- 
ting of  a  poem,  and  you  are  met  at  once  by  the 
spirited  counter-statement  that  the  poet  has 
taught  us  a  particularly  noble  lesson  in  that 
particularly  noble  verse.  Push  your  heresy  a 
step  further  by  hinting  that  the  question  at 
issue  is  not  so  much  the  nobility  of  the  lesson 
taught  as  the  degree  of  beauty  which  has  been 
made  manifest  in  the  teaching,  and  you  find 
yourself  in  much  the  same  position  as  that 
unfortunate  Epicurean  who  strayed  wantonly 
into  the  lecture-hall  of  Epictetus,  and  got  phi- 
losophically crushed  for  his  presumption.  The 


106  POINTS  OF  VIEW. 

fiction  of  the  day,  a  commonplace  product  for 
the  most  part,  which  surely  merits  lighter  treat- 
ment at  our  hands,  is  subjected  to  a  similar 
discipline  ;  and  the  novelist,  finding  his  own 
importance  immensely  increased  thereby,  rises 
promptly  to  the  emergency,  and,  with  charac- 
teristic diffidence,  consents  to  be  our  guide, 
philosopher,  and  friend.  It  is  amusing  to  hear 
Bishop  Copleston,  writing  for  that  young  and 
vivacious  generation  who  knew  not  the  seri- 
ousness of  life,  remind  them  pointedly  that 
"the  task  of  pleasing  is  at  all  times  easier 
than  that  of  instructing."  It  is  delightful 
to  think  that  there  ever  was  a  period  when 
people  preferred  to  be  pleased  rather  than 
instructed.  It  is  refreshing  to  go  back  in 
spirit  to  those  halcyon  days  when  poets 
sang  of  their  ladies'  eyebrows  rather  than  of 
the  inscrutable  problems  of  fate,  and  when 
Mrs.  Battle  relaxed  herself,  after  a  game  of 
whist,  over  that  genial  and  unostentatious 
trifle  called  a  novel.  Fancy  Mrs.  Battle  re- 
laxing herself  to-day  over  "  Daniel  Deronda," 
or  "  The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feveril,"  or  "  The 
Story  of  an  African  Farm  "  ! 

Vernon   Lee,    speaking   by    the   mouth   of 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  107 

Marcel,  that  shadowy  young  Frenchman  who 
is  none  the  less  unpleasant  for  being  so  indis- 
tinct, would  have  us  believe  that  this  incor- 
rigible habit  of  applying  ethical  standpoints 
to  artistic  questions  is  merely  an  English  idio- 
syncrasy, one  of  those  "  weird  and  exquisite 
moral  impressions"  which  can  be  gathered 
only  from  contact  with  British  soil.  But  in 
view  of  the  deductions  recently  drawn  from 
French  and  Russian  fiction  by  an  ingenious 
American  critic,  we  are  forced  to  conclude 
that  true  didacticism  is  an  exotic  of  such  rare 
and  subtle  excellence  as  frequently  to  be  mis- 
taken for  vice.  In  fact,  it  is  not  its  least 
advantageous  peculiarity  that  a  novelist  may, 
on  high  moral  grounds,  treat  of  a  great  many 
subjects  which  he  would  be  compelled  rigor- 
ously to  let  alone,  if  he  had  no  nobler  object 
before  him  than  the  mere  pleasure  and  en- 
tertainment of  his  readers.  There  are  no 
improper  novels  any  longer,  because  even 
those  that  strike  the  uninitiated  as  admirably 
adapted  to  the  spiritual  requirements  of  Coin- 
modus  or  Elagabalus  are,  in  truth,  far  more 
moral  than  morality  itself,  being  set  up,  like 
the  festering  heads  of  old-time  criminals,  as  a 


108  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

stern  warning  in  the  market-place.  Zola,  we 
all  know,  aspires  as  much  to  be  a  teacher  as 
George  Eliot.  His  methods  are  different, 
to  be  sure,  but  the  directing  principle  is  the 
same.  He  can  neither  amuse  nor  please,  but 
he  can  and  will  instruct.  "  When  I  have  once 
shown  you,"  he  seems  to  say,  "  every  known 
detail  of  every  known  sin,  —  and  the  list,  it 
must  be  confessed,  is  a  long  one,  —  you  will 
then  be  glad  to  walk  purely  on  your  appointed 
path.  You  will  remember  what  I  have  de- 
scribed to  you,  and  be  cautious."  But  it  may 
fairly  be  doubted  whether  the  Spartan  boys, 
whose  anxious  fathers  exhibited  to  them  the 
drunken  Helots  sprawling  swine-like  in  the 
sun,  were  quite  as  deeply  shocked  at  the 
sight  as  classical  history  would  give  us  to 
understand.  There  are  some  old-fashioned 
lines  by  an  old-fashioned  poet  to  the  effect 
that  the  ugliness  of  Vice  is  no  especial  det- 
riment to  her  seductions,  if  we  will  only  look 
at  her  often  enough  to  forget  it.  Probably 
those  Spartan  lads,  after  a  few  educational 
experiments,  began  to  think  that  the  Helots, 
in  their  reeking  filth  and  bestiality,  were 
rather  interesting  studies ;  were  experiencing 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  109 

new  and  perhaps  pleasurable  emotions  ;  were 
more  comfortable,  at  all  events,  than  they 
themselves,  sitting  stiff  and  upright  at  the 
public  table,  with  a  scanty  plateful  of  unpalat- 
able broth  ;  were,  in  short,  having  a  jolly  good 
time  of  it,  —  and  why  not  try  for  once  what 
such  thorough-going  drunkenness  was  like  ? 

This  point  of  view,  however,  is  far  too  shal- 
low and  frivolous  to  find  favor  with  the  seri- 
ous apostles  who  are  regenerating  the  world 
by  the  simple  process  of  calling  old  and  evil 
things  by  new  and  beautiful  names.  In  the 
days  of  our  great-grandfathers,  a  novel  was 
simply  a  novel.  Ten  chances  to  one  it  was 
not  as  virtuous  as  it  should  have  been,  in 
which  case  the  great-grandfathers  laughed 
over  it  jovially,  if  they  chanced  to  be  light- 
minded,  or  shook  their  heads  impressively, 
if  they  were  disposed  to  be  grave ;  perhaps 
even  going  so  far  as  to  lock  it  up,  having 
previously  satisfied  their  own  curiosity,  from 
their  equally  curious  families.  But  it  never 
occurred  to  them  to  make  a  merit  of  reading 
"  Tom  Jones  "  or  "  Humphry  Clinker,"  any 
more  than  it  occurred  to  the  authors  of  those 
ingenious  books  to  pose  as  illustrative  moral- 


110  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

ists  before  the  world.  The  men  of  that  ro- 
bust generation  were  better  able  to  bear  the 
theory  of  their  amusements,  and  vices  were 
quite  content  to  flourish  shamelessly  under 
their  proper  names.  Cruelty  then  took  the 
form  of  pastime,  — bear-baiting,  badger-draw- 
ing, cock-fighting;  questionable  pleasures, 
doubtless,  yet  gentle  as  the  sports  of  cherubs 
when  compared  with  the  ever-increasing  ago- 
nies of  vivisection,  with  the  ceaseless  and 
nameless  experiments  of  German  and  Italian 
scientists,  the  "  JFisiologia  del  Dolore  "  of  Pro- 
fessor Mantegazza,  all  of  which  horrors  are 
justified  and  turned  into  painful  duties  by  our 
new  evolutionary  morality.  Sensuality,  too, 
which  used  to  show  itself  coarse,  smiling,  un- 
masked, and  unmistakable,  is  now  serious, 
analytic,  and  so  burdened  with  a  sense  of  its 
responsibilities  that  it  passes  muster  half  the 
time  as  a  new  type  of  asceticism.  The  moral 
animus  with  which  Frenchmen  write  immoral 
books  is  one  of  the  paradoxes  of  our  present 
system  of  ethics  ;  and  it  occasionally  happens 
that  the  simple-minded  reader,  failing  to  ap- 
preciate the  shadowy  elevation  of  their  plat- 
form, fancies  they  are  working  con  amore 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  Ill 

amid  their  unpromising  and  unsavory  ma- 
terials. So  it  was  that  Mr.  Howells  startled 
a  great  many  respectable  people  by  the  as- 
surance that  "Madame  Bovary"  was  "one 
impassioned  cry  of  the  austerest  morality," 
when  they  had  innocently  supposed  it  to  be 
something  vastly  different.  Even  respectable 
critics,  unemancipated  English  critics  in  par- 
ticular, seem  to  have  been  somewhat  taken 
back  by  the  breadth  of  this  definition.  Per- 
haps they  recalled  Epictetus,  —  "  Austerity 
should  be  both  cleanly  and  pleasing,"  —  and 
considered  that  "  Madame  Bovary "  was  nei- 
ther. Perhaps  they  thought,  and  with  some 
reason,  that  never,  since  Swift's  angry  eyes 
were  closed  in  death,  has  any  writer  expressed 
more  harsh  and  cruel  scorn  for  his  fellow-men 
than  Gustave  Flaubert,  and  that  concentrated 
contempt  is  seldom  the  most  effective  weapon 
for  an  apostle.  Perhaps  they  were  merely 
conventional  enough  to  fancy  that  a  novel, 
against  which  even  wicked  Paris  protested, 
was  hardly  decorous  enough  for  sober  Lon- 
don. At  all  events,  it  would  appear  as  though 
a  goodly  number  of  stragglers  along  the  path 
of  virtue  felt  themselves  insufficiently  advanced 


112  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

for  such  a  difficult  and  abstruse  text-book  of 
ethics. 

In  the  midst  of  this  universal  disclaimer, 
it  never  seems  to  occur  to  anybody  to  ask  the 
simple  question,  Why  should  "  Madame  Bo- 
vary  "  be  an  impassioned  cry  of  the  austerest 
morality,  —  why  should  any  novel  undertake 
to  be  an  impassioned  cry  of  morality  at  all  ? 
It  is  not  the  office  of  a  novelist  to  show  us  how 
to  behave  ourselves ;  it  is  not  the  business  of 
fiction  to  teach  us  anything.  Scientific  truths, 
new  forms  of  religion,  the  humorous  eccentri- 
cities of  socialism,  the  countless  fads  of  radical 
reformers,  the  proper  way  to  live  our  own 
lives,  —  these  matters,  which  are  now  objects 
of  such  tender  regard  to  the  story-teller,  form 
no  part  of  his  rightful  stock-in-trade.  \  His 
task  is  simply  to  give  us  pleasure,  and  his 
duty  is  to  give  it  within  the  not  very  Puritan- 
ical limits  prescribed  by  our  modern  notions 
of  decency.  If  he  chooses  to  overstep  these 
limits,  an  offense  against  propriety,  it  is  exas- 
perating to  have  him  defended  on  the  score  of 
an  ethical  purpose,  an  offense  against  art ;  for 
there  is  nothing  so  hopelessly  inartistic  as  to 
represent  the  world  as  worse  than  it  is,  or  to 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  113 

express  a  too  vehement  dissatisfaction  with  the 
men  who  dwell  in  it.  Art  is  never  didactic, 
does  not  take  kindly  to  facts,  is  helpless  to 
grapple  with  theories,  and  is  killed  outright  by 
a  sermon.  Its  knowledge  is  not  that  of  a 
schoolmaster,  and  is  not  imparted  through  the 
severe  medium  of  lessons.  It  assumes  no  re- 
sponsibilities, undertakes  no  reformation,  and, 
as  George  Sand  neatly  points  out,  proves  no- 
thing. What  are  we  to  learn,  she  asks,  from 
"  Paul  and  Virginia  "  ?  Merely  that  youth, 
friendship,  love,  and  the  tropics  are  beautiful 
things  when  St.  Pierre  describes  them.  What 
from  "  Faust  ?  "  Only  that  science,  human 
life,  fantastic  images,  profound,  graceful,  or 
terrible  ideas,  are  wonderful  things  when  Goe- 
the makes  out  of  them  a  sublime  and  moving 
picture.  This  sounds  like  high  authority  for 
Mr.  Oscar  Wilde's  latest  and  most  amusing 
heresy,  that  Nature  gains  her  true  distinction 
from  being  reproduced,  with  necessary  modifi- 
cations, by  Art ;  that  too  close  a  copy  of  the 
original  is  fatal  to  the  perfection  of  the  younger 
and  fairer  sister ;  that  the  insignificant  and 
sordid  types  in  which  Nature  takes  such  repre- 
hensible delight  are  to  be,  if  possible,  forgot- 


114  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

ten,  rather  than  dandled  into  insulting  promi- 
nence; and  that  not  all  the  dreary  vices  of 
the  most  drearily  vicious  man  or  woman  whom 
Zola  ever  drew  can  give  that  man  or  woman 
a  right  to  breathy  in  the  tranquil  air  of  fiction. 
As  for  accepting  inartistic  and  repellent  sin- 
ners for  the  sake  of  the  moral  lesson  which 
may,  or  may  not,  be  drawn  from  their  sin,  Mr. 
Wilde  is  as  prompt  as  De  Quincey  himself  to 
repudiate  any  such  utilitarian  theory.  "  If 
you  insist  on  my  telling  you  what  is  the  moral 
of  the  Iliad,"  says  De  Quincey,  "  I  must  insist 
on  your  telling  me  what  is  the  moral  of  a  rat- 
tlesnake, or  the  moral  of  Niagara.  I  suppose 
the  moral  is,  that  you  must  get  out  of  their 
way  if  you  mean  to  moralize  much  longer." 

But  this  light-hearted  flippancy  on  the  part 
of  the  critic  was  only  possible,  or  at  least  was 
only  acceptable,  in  those  days  when  the  nov- 
elist had  not  yet  awakened  to  his  serious 
duties  in  life.  Content,  for  the  most  part,  to 
tell  a  story,  he  barely  remembered  now  and 
then,  in  the  beginning,  may  be,  or  at  the  end, 
that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  an  ethical 
purpose  in  existence.  Even  Richardson,  the 
father  of  English  didactic  fiction,  was  but  an 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  115 

indifferent  parent,  starting  out  with  a  great 
many  gallant  promises  on  behalf  of  his  off- 
spring, and  easily  forgetting  all  about  them. 
Miss  Burney  was  as  cheerfully  unconscious  of 
her  own  grave  obligations  to  society  as  was 
Miss  Austen  ;  while  in  those  few  lines  with 
which  Sir  Walter  Scott  closes  "  The  Heart 
of  Mid  -  Lothian  "  —  lines  addressed  to  the 
"  reader,"  and  containing  some  irrefutable  but 
not  very  original  remarks  about  the  happiness 
of  virtue  and  the  infelicity  of  vice  —  we  see  an 
almost  pathetic  avowal  on  the  part  of  the  great 
novelist  that,  in  the  mere  delight  of  telling  his 
beautiful  and  best  loved  tale,  he  had  well- 
nigh  lost  sight  of  any  moral  lesson  it  might 
be  fitted  to  convey,  and  was  trying  at  the  last 
moment  to  make  amends  for  this  deficiency. 
Imagine  George  Eliot  forgetting,  or  permit- 
ting her  readers  to  forget,  the  moral  lesson  of 
"Adam  Bede,"  when  every  fresh  development 
of  character  or  of  narrative  has  for  its  con- 
scions  purpose  the  driving  home  of  hard  and 
bitter  truths.  No  need  for  the  authoress  of 
"  Romola  "  to  wind  up  her  story  with  that 
paragraph  of  excellent  advice  to  poor  little 
Lillo,  who  is  after  all  rather  young  to  profit 


116  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

by  it ;  while  we  who  have  followed  Tito  from 
his  first  joyous  entrance  into  Florence  to  that 
last  dreadful  moment  when,  floating,  bruised, 
beautiful,  and  helpless,  down  the  Arno,  he 
opens  his  dying  eyes  to  meet  the  horror  of 
Baldassarre's  vengeance,  —  we  surely  do  not 
require  to  be  warned  afresh  against  the  unpar- 
donable sin  of  making  things  easy  for  our- 
selves. In  the  pathetic  history  of  the  marred 
and  broken  lives  of  "  Middlemarch,"  in  the 
darker  and  harsher  tragedy  of  "  Daniel  De- 
ronda,"  we  see  forever  present  upon  each  suc- 
ceeding page  the  underlying  motive  of  the 
tale  ;  we  hear  George  Eliot  listening,  as  Mor- 
ley  says,  to  the  sound  of  her  own  voice,  and 
announcing  as  distinctly  as  she  announced  in 
life  that  her  function  is  that  of  the  aesthetic 
teacher,  to  rouse  the  nobler  emotions  which 
make  mankind  desire  the  social  right. 

If  the  test  of  the  true  artist  be  to  conceal 
his  art,  then  this  transparently  didactic  pur- 
pose is  fatal  to  the  perfection  of  any  work 
claiming  to  spring  from  the  imagination.  It 
is  impossible  to  preach  a  sermon  out  of  the 
mouth  of  fiction  without  making  the  fiction 
subordinate  to  the  sermon,  and  thus  at  once 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  117 

destroying  the  just  proportions  of  a  story,  and 
forfeiting  that  subtle  sympathy  with  life,  as  it 
is,  which  gives  to  every  artistic  masterpiece  its 
admirable  air  of  self-sufficing  and  harmonious 
repose.  "  I  always  tremble  when  I  see  a 
philosophical  idea  attached  to  a  novel,"  said 
Sainte-Beuve,  who  was  spared  by  the  kindly 
hand  of  death  from  the  sight  of  countless 
novels  attached  to  philosophical  ideas.  Charles 
Lamb,  with  that  unerring  intuition  which  was 
the  most  wonderful  thing  about  his  indolent 
luminous  genius,  recognized,  even  in  the  com- 
parative sunlight  of  his  day,  the  growing 
shadow  of  a  speculative,  disciplinal,  analytic 
literature  which  should  sadly  overrate  its  own 
responsibilities  and  importance.  "  We  turn 
away,"  he  said,  "  from  the  real  essences  of 
things  to  hunt  after  their  relative  shadows, 
moral  duties  ;  whereas,  if  the  truth  of  things 
were  fairly  represented,  the  relative  duties 
might  be  safely  trusted  to  themselves,  and 
moral  philosophy  lose  the  name  of  a  science." 
No  one  understood  more  thoroughly  than 
Lamb  that  the  purely  natural  point  of  view, 
as  apart  from  the  purely  ethical  point  of  view, 
supplies  the  proper  basis  for  all  imaginative 


118  POINTS   OF    VIEW. 

writing.  "  I  have  lived  to  grow  into  an  in- 
decent character,"  he  sighed,  struggling  with 
whimsical  dejection  to  comprehend  the  new 
forces  at  work  ;  sometimes  protesting  angrily 
against  the  "  Puritanical  obtuseness,  the  stupid, 
infantile  goodness  which  is  creeping  among 
us,  instead  of  the  vigorous  passions  and  vir- 
tues clad  in  flesh  and  blood  ;  "  sometimes  con- 
templating, with  humorously  lowered  eyelids, 
"  the  least  little  men  who  spend  their  time  and 
lose  their  wits  in  chasing  nimble  and  retiring 
Truth,  to  the  extreme  perturbation  and  drying 
up  of  the  moistures." 

"  On  court,  Mas  !  apr&s  la  v^rit^  ; 
Ah  !  croyez-moi,  1'erreur  a  son  m^rite." 

But  if  modern  novelists  are  disposed  to  sacri- 
fice their  art  to  a  conscious  ethical  purpose, 
to  write  fiction,  as  Mr.  Oscar  Wilde  wittily 
says,  "  as  though  it  were  a  painful  duty,"  it 
can  hardly  be  denied  that  they  are  giving  the 
public  what  the  public  craves  ;  that  they  are 
on  the  safe  side  of  criticism,  and  have  chosen 
their  position  wisely,  if  not  well.  Should  any 
one  feel  inclined  to  doubt  this,  it  might  be 
a  convincing  and  salutary  exercise  to  re-read 
as  swiftly  as  possible  a  few  of  the  numerous 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  119 

essays  and  reviews  which  followed  closely  on 
George  Eliot's  death,  and  which  have  not 
altogether  vanished  from  the  literary  market 
now.  With  one  or  two  distinct  and  admi- 
rable exceptions,  they  deal  almost  exclusively 
with  the  didactic  aspect  of  her  novels ;  they 
weigh  and  balance  every  social  theory,  every 
spiritual  problem,  every  moral  lesson,  to  be 
extracted  from  her  pages ;  they  take  her  as 
seriously  as  she  took  herself,  and  give  their 
keenest  praise  to  those  precise  qualities  which 
marred  the  artistic  perfection  of  her  work.  I 
have  myself  counted  the  obnoxious  word  "  eth- 
ics "  six  times  repeated  in  the  opening  para- 
graph of  one  review,  and  have  felt  too  deeply 
disheartened  by  such  an  outset  to  penetrate 
any  further.  On  the  other  hand,  her  dra- 
matic power,  her  subtle  insight,  her  masterly 
style,  her  warm  and  vivid  pictures  of  a  life 
that  has  touched  us  so  closely,  the  exquisite 

art   with    which   her     earlier   tales    are   con- 

& 

structed,  and,  above  and  beyond  all,  her 
delicious  and  inimitable  humor,  —  these  things 
appear  to  be  regarded  as  mere  minor  details, 
useful  perhaps  and  pleasing,  but  strictly  sub- 
ordinate to  the  nobler  endowments  of  her 


120  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

spirit.     That  some  of  us  endure  George  Eliot 
the  teacher  for  the  sake  of  George  Eliot  the 
story-teller   is  a   truth  too  painful  to  be  put 
often  into  words.     That  little  Maggie  Tulliver 
spelling  out  the  examples  in  the  Latin  gram- 
mar, and  secretly  delighted  at  her  own  amaz- 
ing cleverness,  enables  some  of  us  to  support 
the  processional  virtues  of  Romola,  and  the 
deadly  priggishness  of  Daniel  Deronda,  is  a 
melancholy  fact  which   perhaps   it   would  be 
wiser  to  ignore.     Maggie,  as  we  are  aware, 
has  deeply  shocked  the  sensitive  nature  of  Mr. 
Swinburne  by  her  grossness  in  failing  in  love 
with    Stephen,   for    no   better   reason,  appar- 
ently, than  because  he  was  the  first  big,  and 
strong,    and     handsome   man    she    had   ever 
known.     That  wonderful   scene  on  the  boat, 
with  its  commonplace  setting  and  strained  in- 
tensity of  emotion ;  the  short,  sad,  rapturous 
flight;    the  few    misty   hours   of    passionate 
dreaming   which   made   poor   Maggie's   little 
share  of  earthly  happiness,  have  branded  her 
so  deeply  in  the  sight  of  this  hardened  moral- 
ist that  even  her  bitter  agony  of  renunciation 
and    her   final    triumph    have  failed    to  win 
her  pardon.     With  what   chastened   severity 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  121 

and  with  what  an  animated  vocabulary  he 
condemns  the  "  revolting  avowal "  of  her  love, 
the  "hideous  transformation,"  the  '''vulgar 
and  brutal  outrage/'  the  "  radical  and  moral 
plague  spot,"  which  debases  her  into  something 
too  vile  for  pity  or  redemption  !  Verily,  this 
is  the  squeamishness  of  the  true  ascetic  who 
has  somehow  mistaken  his  vocation,  and  there 
will  be  a  scant  allowance  of  cakes  and  ale  for 
any  of  us  when  it  is  Mr.  Swinburne's  turn  to 
be  virtuous. 

As  for  the  humor  of  George  Eliot's  novels, 
that  mysterious  humor  which  she  herself  was 
not  humorous  enough  to  appreciate,  it  de- 
serves better  treatment  at  our  hands,  were 
it  only  for  the  sake  of  its  valuable  adapta- 
bility, were  it  only  because  it  is  pliant  enough 
to  lit  in  all  the  time  with  our  own  duller 
imaginings,  and  to  afford  a  basis  and  an  il- 
lustration for  our  own  inadequate  thoughts. 
From  what  depths  of  her  sombre  nature  came 
those  arrow  -  points  tipped  with  fire,  or, 
choicer  still,  those  tempered  shafts  of  re- 
flective ridicule,  which  are  kindly  enough  to 
win  our  unhesitating  acquiescence  ?  With 
what  pleasure  we  are  reminded  that  "  people 


122  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

who  live  at  a  distance  are  naturally  less  faulty 
than  those  immediately  under  our  own  eyes, 
and  it  seems  superfluous,  when  we  consider 
the  geographical  position  of  the  Ethiopians, 
and  how  very  little  the  Greeks  had  to  do  with 
them,  to  inquire  further  why  Homer  calls 
them  '  blameless'  "  !  Surely,  to  express  a  truth 
humorously  is  to  rob  that  truth  of  all  offen- 
sive qualities,  and  Lucian  himself  would  be 
prepared  to  admit  that,  in  a  case  like  this,  it 
is  almost  as  pleasant  as  falsehood.  But  to 
beguile  us  into  the  grateful  shades  of  fiction, 
as  Jael  beguiled  Sisera  into  the  shelter  of  her 
tent,  and  then,  with  deadly  purpose,  to  trans- 
fix us  with  a  truth  as  sharp  and  cruel  as  the 
nail  with  which  Jael  slew  her  guest,  is  a  das- 
tardly betrayal  of  confidence.  When  a  nov- 
elist undertakes  to  sit  in  judgment  upon  his 
characters,  for  the  sake  of  illustrating  some 
moral  lesson  with  which  he  has  no  need  to 
concern  himself^  he  rudely  breaks  the  mystic 
web  of  illusion,  and  destroys  the  charm  which 
binds  us  to  his  side.  What  is  it  that  gives  to 
"  Henry  Esmond  "  its  supreme  artistic  value, 
if  not  the  fact  that  Thackeray  sank  himself 
out  of  sight ;  was  content  for  once  to  look  at 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  123 

things  with  Esmond's  gentle  eyes,  to  judge  of 
things  with  Esmond's  tolerant  soul ;  and  for- 
bore to  whip  his  actors  through  the  play  like 
criminals  at  the  cart  -  tail  ?  On  the  other 
hand,  what  whimsical  sense  of  responsibility 
induced  Bulwer  to  elaborate  a  character  like 
Randal  Leslie,  only  to  make  of  him  an  educa- 
tional sign-post,  after  the  approved  fashion  of 
Miss  Edgeworth's  "  Early  Lessons  "  ?  Judged 
by  a  purely  ethical  standard,  Randal  no  doubt 
merited  his  failure ;  judged  by  the  standard 
of  his  ability  and  energy,  Reynard  the  Fox  was 
as  little  likely  to  fail ;  and  though  Mr.  Froude 
tells  us  that  "  women,  with  their  clear  moral 
insight,  have  no  sympathy  with  Reynard's 
successful  villainy,"  yet  I  doubt  whether  we 
should  really  like  to  see  him  outwitted  by  a 
fool  like  Bruin,  or  beaten  by  a  bully  like  Ise- 
grim.  He  is  a  terrible  scamp,  to  be  sure,  but 
the  charm  of  the  situation  is  that  we  are  not 
compelled  to  watch  it  from  a  jury-box. 

Now  the  disadvantage  of  being  at  once  a 
novelist  and  a  teacher  is  that  you  have  no 
neutral  ground  from  which  to  observe  your 
characters,  no  friendly  appreciation  of  things 
or  people  as  you  find  them.  What  the  ar- 


124  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

tist  accepts  with  delicate  sympathy,  though 
with  no  pretense  at  justification,  the  moralist 
must  either  justify  or  condemn.  The  first 
course  is  common  enough,  and  produces  a 
„  class  of  literature  essentially  vicious  because 
of  its  very  limitations,  —  six  deadly  sins  held 
up  to  public  execration,  and  the  seventh  pre- 
sented to  us  tenderly  as  an  ill-understood  and 
sadly  calumniated  virtue.  The  second  course 
—  that  of  implied  condemnation  —  is  equally 
open  to  a  Sunday-school  story  or  to  the  least 
decorous  of  French  novels ;  both  have  for 
their  avowed  object  the  pillorying  of  vice,  and 
both  put  forward  this  claim  as  a  reasonable 
excuse  for  existence.  But  art  has  no  pillory, 
no  stocks,  no  whipping-post,  no  exclusive 
methods  for  fixing  our  attention  upon  sin. 
Art  gives  us  Lady  Macbeth  and  lago,  and 
gives  them  to  us  without  reproaches,  without 
extenuation,  and  without  any  attempt  to  re- 
form. It  is  less  painful  to  watch  the  irresisti- 
ble development  of  their  respective  crimes 
than  to  hear  Thackeray  lashing  with  keen 
scorn  some  poor  sinner  stumbling  through  the 
mazes  of  worldly  wickedness,  or  to  see  George 
Eliot  pursuing  one  of  her  own  creations 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  125 

with  inextinguishable  severity  and  contempt. 
There  is  something  paralyzing  in  the  cold 
anger  with  which  Rosamond  Vincy  is  branded 
and  shamed  ;  there  is  something  appalling  in 
the  conscientious  vindictiveness  with  which 
Tito  is  hunted  down,  step  by  step,  to  his  final 
retribution.  That  delightful  essayist,  Mr. 
Karl  Hillebrand,  whose  artistic  nature  is 
about  as  much  at  home  among  modern  the- 
ories as  a  strayed  Faun  in  a  button  factory, 
has  given  us  a  half-humorous,  half-despairing 
picture  of  some  old  acquaintances  under  the 
new  dispensation :  of  Manon  Lescaut  threat- 
ened with  Charlotte  Bronte's  birch-rod ;  of 
Squire  Western  opening  his  startled  eyes  as 
Zola  proceeds  to  detail  for  his  benefit  the 
latest  and  most  highly  realistic  study  of  de- 
lirium tremens  ;  of  Falstaff,  whom  that  losel 
Shakespeare  treated  so  indulgently,  listening 
abashed  to  George  Eliot's  scathing  denuncia- 
tions. "  For  really,  Sir  John,"  he  hears  her 
say,  "  you  have  no  excuse  whatever.  If  you 
were  a  poor  devil  who  had  never  had  any 
but  bad  examples  before  your  eyes !  —  but 
you  have  had  all  the  advantages  which  des- 
tiny can  give  to  man  on  his  way  through  life. 


126  POINTS   OF    VIEW. 

Are  you  not  born  of  a  good  family?  Have 
you  not  had  at  Oxford  the  best  education 
England  is  able  to  give  to  her  children? 
Have  you  not  had  the  highest  connections  ? 
And,  nevertheless,  how  low  you  have  fallen ! 
Do  you  know  why  ?  I  have  warned  my  Tito 
over  and  over  again  against  it :  because  you 
have  always  done  that  only  which  was  agree- 
able to  you,  and  have  shunned  everything  that 
was  unpleasant." 

This  sounds  like  sad  trifling  to  our  sober 
and  orthodox  ears,  but  it  is  not  more  auda- 
cious, on  the  whole,  than  the  pathetic  lamenta- 
tions of  Mr.  Oscar  Wilde  over  the  career  of 
Charles  Reade :  the  most  disheartening^  he 
protests,  in  all  literature  ;  "  wasted  in  a  fool- 
ish attempt  to  be  modern,  and  to  draw  atten- 
tion to  the  state  of  our  convict  prisons,  and 
the  management  of  private  lunatic  asylums. 
Charles  Dickens  was  depressing  enough,  in  all 
conscience,  when  he  tried  to  arouse  our  sympa- 
thy for  the  victims  of  the  poor-law  administra- 
tion ;  but  Charles  Reade,  an  artist,  a  scholar, 
a  man  with  a  true  sense  of  beauty,  raging 
and  roaring  over  the  abuses  of  modern  life 
like  a  common  pamphleteer  or  a  sensational 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  127 

journalist,  is  really  a  sight  for  the  angels  to 
weep  over."  It  is  just  possible  that  whatever 
personal  interest  the  angelic  hosts  take  in  our 
earthly  lot  may  be  directed  to  philanthropy 
rather  than  to  literature ;  but,  for  the  idle  and 
inglorious  mortal,  the  protest  holds  a  world  of 
truth  and  meaning.  Reade,  as  a  reformer,  is 
melancholy  company ;  and  Dickens  is  inex- 
pressibly dismal  when  he  drags  the  Chancery 
business  into  "  Bleak  House,"  and  the  pauper 
dinner-table  into  "  Oliver  Twist,"  and  that 
dreary  caricature,  the  Circumlocution  Office, 
into  "  Little  Dorrit."  If  these  things  really  ac- 
complished the  good  that  is  claimed  for  them, 
it  was  dearly  bought  by  the  weariness  of  so 
many  millions  of  readers.  "  A  fiction  contrived 
to  support  an  opinion  is  a  vicious  composition," 
said  Jeffrey,  who  was  as  apt  in  his  general  crit- 
icisms as  he  was  awkward  in  their  particular 
applications,  and  who  lived  before  the  era  of 
serious  and  educational  novels.  To-day  we 
have  the  unhesitating  assertion  of  Mr.  How- 
ells  that  one  of  Tolstoi 's  highest  claims  to  our 
consideration  is  his  steadfast  teaching  "that 
all  war,  private  and  public,  is  a  sin."  Mr. 
Ruskin,  it  may  be  remembered,  holds  some- 


128  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

what  different  views :  "  There  is  no  great  art 
possible  to  a  nation  but  that  which  is  based 
on  war."  Yet  as  every  man  is  entitled  to  his 
own  opinion  in  such  matters,  there  is  no  reason 
why  we  should  quarrel  with  either  the  Russian 
or  the  Englishman  for  their  chosen  principles. 
But  Euskin  is  no  greater  as  an  essayist  be- 
cause he  approves  of  war,  and  Tolstoi  gains 
nothing  as  a  novelist  because  he  adheres  to 
peace.  The  glory  of  the  battlefield,  its  pathos 
and  its  horror,  are  all  fitting  subjects  for  the 
artist's  pen  or  pencil.  He  may  stir  our  blood 
and  rouse  our  fighting  instincts,  like  Homer  or 
Scott ;  or  he  may  move  us  to  pity,  and  sorrow, 
and  shame,  by  the  revelation  of  all  the  shat- 
tered hopes  and  bitter  agonies  that  lie  beyond. 
But  his  own  greatness  depends  exclusively  on 
his  treatment  of  the  subject,  and  not  on  his 
point  of  view.  Who  knows  and  who  cares 
what  De  Neuville  thinks  of  war  ?  He  paints 
for  us  a  handful  of  men  roused  at  dawn,  and 
rushing  gallantly  to  their  deaths,  and  we  feel 
our  hearts  beat  high  as  we  look  at  them.  The 
terror,  the  awf  ulness,  the  self-forgetting  cour- 
age, the  gay  defiance  of  battle,  all  are  there, 
imprisoned  mysteriously  in  the  artistic  group- 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  129 

ing  of  a  few  blue-coated  soldiers.  But  Vere- 
stchagin,  who  aspires  to  teach  us  the  wicked- 
ness of  war,  is  powerless  to  thrill  us  in  this 
manner.  He  is  probably  sincere  in  his  opinions, 
and  he  has  striven  hard  to  give  them  form  and 
expression,  but,  lacking  the  artistic  impulse, 
he  has  for  the  most  part  striven  in  vain.  His 
huge  canvases,  packed  with  dead  and  dying, 
are  less  impressive,  less  solemn,  less  painful 
even,  from  their  monotonous  overcrowding, 
than  a  single  Zouave,  whose  wounds  De  Neu- 
ville  has  no  need  to  emphasize  with  vast  ex- 
penditure of  vermilion,  when  the  faintness  of 
a  mortal  agony  draws  his  weary  body  to  the 
earth.  "  All  real  power,"  says  Euskin,  "  lies 
in  delicacy."  To  trouble  the  senses  is  an  easy 
task,  but  it  is  through  the  imagination  only 
that  we  receive  any  strong  and  lasting  impres- 
sions, and  no  sincerity  of  purpose  can  suffice 
to  turn  a  crude  didacticism  into  art. 

It  is  hard  to  analyze  the  peculiar  nature  of 
the  claims  asserted  and  upheld  by  the  disciples 
of  modern  realism.  They  are  not  content 
with  the  splendid  position  which  is  theirs  by 
right,  —  not  content  with  the  admirable  work 
they  have  done,  and  the  hold  they  have  se- 


130  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

cured  on  the  sympathies  of  our  earnest,  ration- 
alistic, and  unimaginative  age ;  but  they  as- 
sume in  some  subtle  and  incomprehensible 
way  that  their  school  is  based  upon  man's 
love  and  appreciation  for  his  fellow-creatures. 
If  we  would  but  look  upon  all  men  as  our 
brothers,  it  is  plainly  hinted,  all  men  would  be 
of  equal  interest  to  us,  and  it  is  our  duty,  as 
nineteenth-century  citizens,  to  accept  and  cher- 
ish this  universal  relationship.  To  the  perpet- 
ual sounding  of  the  humanitarian  note,  there 
are  some,  it  is  true,  who  answer,  with  Vernon 
Lee's  very  amusing  and  very  wicked  skeptic, 
that  "the  new-fangled  bore  called  mankind  is 
as  great  a  plague  as  the  old-fashioned  nuisance 
called  a  soul ; "  but  there  are  others  who,  find- 
ing themselves  in  full  possession  of  a  con- 
science, stoutly  maintain  that  they  love  their 
undistinguished  brother  none  the  less  because 
they  weary  of  his  society  in  literature  and  art. 
It  was  Ruskin,  for  example,  who  sneered  at 
George  Eliot's  characters  as  the  "  sweepings  of 
a  Pentonville  omnibus," — a  terrible  misap- 
plication of  an  inspired  phrase ;  but  Ruskin 
is  the  last  man  in  Christendom  who  can  be 
accused  of  an  indifference  to  his  fellow-men. 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT. 

His  whole  life  is  a  sufficient  refutation  of  the 
charge.  Voltaire  is  responsible  for  the  state- 
ment that  the  world  is  full  of  people  who  are 
not  worth  knowing.  Yet  Voltaire  was  for- 
ever restlessly  espousing  some  popular  cause, 
forever  interesting  himself  in  the  supposed 
welfare  of  these  eminently  undesirable  associ- 
ates. What  he  thought,  and  what  he  was  quite 
right  in  thinking,  is  that  we  gain  nothing,  intel- 
lectually or  spiritually,  from  the  mass  of  men 
and  women  with  whom  we  come  in  contact  ; 
and  that  it  is  wiser  to  fix  our  attention  upon 
graceful  and  exalted  types  than  to  go  on  for- 
ever, as  Charles  Lamb  expressed  it,  "  encour- 
aging each  other  in  mediocrity." 

The  present  stand  of  realism,  however,  is  but 
one  more  phase  of  the  intrusion  of  ethics  upon 
art,  —  the  assumption  that  I  cannot  have  a  sin- 
cere regard  for  the  welfare  of  my  washerwo- 
man if  I  do  not  care  for  her  company  either 
in  a  book  or  out  of  it.  Tubs  have  grown  in 
favor  since  the  day  when  Wordsworth  was 
compelled,  "  in  deference  to  the  opinion  of 
friends,"  to  substitute  an  impossible  turtle- 
shell  for  the  homely  vessel  in  which  the  blind 
Highland  boy  set  sail  on  Loch  Leven.  All 


132  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

classes  and  all  people,  I  am  now  given  to  un- 
derstand, are  of  supreme  interest  to  the  loving 
student  of  human  nature,  and  it  is  a  "  narrow 
conservatism  "  —  chilling  phrase  — that  seeks 
to  limit  the  artist's  field  of  action.  But  as 
limiting  the  artist's  field  of  action  is  practically 
impossible,  and  not  often  essayed,  it  is  hard  to 
understand  what  the  respective  schools  of  fic- 
tion find  to  fight  over,  and  why  this  new  battle 
of  the  books  should  be  raging  as  fiercely  as  if 
there  were  any  visible  cause  of  war.  It  is  not 
an  orderly  and  well-appointed  battle,  either, 
confined  to  the  ranks  of  critics  and  reviewers, 
but  a  free  skirmish,  where  everybody  who  has 
written  a  novel  rushes  in  and  plays  an  active 
part.  Conflicting  opinions  rattle  around  our 
heads  like  hail,  and  the  voice  of  the  peace- 
maker, —  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  —  protesting  that 
all  schools  are  equally  good,  if  the  scholars 
are  equal  to  their  tasks,  is  lost  in  the  univer- 
sal clamor.  The  only  point  on  which  any  two 
sharpshooters  appear  to  agree  is  in  laying  the 
blame  for  the  "  unmanly  timidity  of  English 
fiction  "  —  a  timidity  not  always  so  apparent 
as  it  might  be  —  on  the  shoulders  of  women, 
who,  it  seems,  will  have  all  novels  modeled  to 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  133 

suit  themselves,  and  who,  with  the  arrogance 
of  supreme  power,  have  reversed  the  political 
situation,  and  deprived  mankind  of  their  vote. 
This  is  the  opinion  of  Eider  Haggard,  and  also 
of  Vernon  Lee,  who  asserts  that  "the  ethics 
of  fiction  are  framed  entirely  for  the  benefit 
or  the  detriment  of  women,"  and  that  its  en- 
forced morality  —  a  defect  which,  to  do  her 
justice,  she  is  striving  her  best  to  eradicate  — 
is  fatal  to  its  mission  in  life. 

But  that  fiction  has  a  mission,  nobody  dares 
to  doubt ;  that  its  ethics  are  of  paramount  im- 
portance, nobody  dares  to  deny.  It  devotes 
itself  in  all  seriousness  to  our  moral  and  intel- 
lectual welfare ;  and  if,  now  and  then,  we  are 
reminded  of  Sydney  Smith,  who  would  rather 
Mr.  Perceval  had  whipped  his  boys  and  saved 
his  country,  we  stifle  the  sinful  impulse,  and 
turn  to  biography  and  history  for  recreation, 
for  that  purely  imaginative  element  which 
places  no  tax  upon  our  conscience  or  credu- 
lity. Yet  we  may  at  least  remember  that 
all  natures  do  not  develop  on  the  same  lines  ; 
that  all  goodness  is  not  comprised  within 
certain  recognized  virtues,  or  limited  to  cer- 
tain fields  of  thought.  Tolstoi,  a  figure  on  a 


134  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

grand  scale,  "  filled  with  pity  for  the  oppressed, 
the  poor,  and  the  lowly,"  has  manifested  the 
sincerity  of  his  creed  by  a  life  of  hard  work 
and  hearty  renunciation.  But  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  the  Tory,  the  "feudalist,"  content  to 
take  the  world  as  he  found  it,  and  to  believe 
that  whatever  is,  is  right,  proved  himself  no 
less  the  friend  and  benefactor  of  his  kind. 
The  halo  round  his  head  is  not  that  of  genius 
only,  but  of  love,  —  love  freely  given  and  abun- 
dantly returned.  The  anxious  whisper  of  the 
London  workmen  to  Allan  Cunningham,  "  Do 
you  know,  sir,  if  this  is  the  street  where  he  is 
lying  ? "  the  rapturous  cry  of  the  little  de- 
formed tailor  who,  with  his  last  breath,  sobbed 
out,  "  The  Lord  bless  and  reward  you  !  "  and, 
falling  back,  expired,  —  these  are  the  sounds 
that  ring  through  generations  to  bear  witness 
to  man's  fidelity  to  man. 

"  For  the  might 
Of  the  whole  world's  good  wishes  with  him  goes," 

sang  Wordsworth,  with  whom  affectionate  hy- 
perbole was  hardly  a  common  fault.  It  can- 
not be  that  Mr.  Howells  believes  in  his  heart 
that  American  children  need  to  be  warned 
against  Sir  Walter's  errors,  and  that  it  is  the 


FICTION  IN  THE  PULPIT.  135 

duty  of  American  parents  to  give  this  solemn 
warning.  Consider  that  it  is  only  in  youth 
that  our  imagination  triumphs  vividly  over  re- 
alities, —  a  triumph  short-lived  enough,  but 
rich  in  fruits  for  the  future.  The  time  comes 
all  too  soon  when  we  doubt,  and  question, 
and  make  room  in  our  puzzled  minds  for 
the  opinions  of  many  men.  Ah,  leave  to  the 
child,  at  least,  his  clear,  intuitive,  unbiased  en- 
joyment, his  sympathy  with  things  that  have 
been !  He  is  not  so  easily  hurt  as  we  sup- 
pose ;  he  is  strong  in  his  elastic  ignorance,  and 
has  no  need  of  a  pepsin  pill  with  every  mouth- 
ful of  literary  food  he  swallows.  Mental  hy- 
giene, it  is  said,  is  apt  to  lead  to  mental  vale- 
tudinarianism ;  but  if  we  are  to  turn  our  very 
nurseries  into  hot-beds  of  prigs,  we  may  say 
once  more  what  was  said  when  Chapelain  pub- 
lished his  portentous  epic,  that  "  a  new  horror 
has  been  added  to  the  accomplishment  of 
reading." 


PLEASURE  :    A   HERESY. 

IT  is  an  interesting  circumstance  in  the 
lives  of  those  persons  who  are  called  either 
heretics  or  reformers,  according  to  the  mental 
attitudes  or  antecedent  prejudices  of  their 
critics,  that  they  always  begin  by  hinting  their 
views  with  equal  modesty  and  moderation. 
It  is  only  when  rubbed  sore  by  friction,  when 
hard  driven  and  half  spent,  that  they  ven- 
ture into  the  open,  and  define  their  positions 
before  the  world  in  all  their  bald  malignity. 
Now  I  have  a  certain  sneaking  sympathy,  not 
with  heretics  or  reformers,  either,  but  with 
that  frame  of  mind  which  compels  a  hunted 
and  harried  creature  suddenly  to  assume  the 
offensive,  cast  prudence  to  the  winds,  nail  his 
thesis  conspicuously  to  the  doorpost,  and 
snortingly  await  developments.  He  is  not, 
while  so  occupied,  a  winning  or  beautiful 
figure,  when  judged  by  the  strict  standards 
of  sweetness  and  light;  but  he  is  eminently 
human,  and  is  entitled  to  the  forbearance  of 
humanity. 


PLEASURE:    A  HERESY.  137 

It  is  now  over  a  year  since,  in  an  article 
called  "  Fiction  in  the  Pulpit,"  and  published 
in  the  "  Atlantic  Monthly,"  I  ventured  to  say, 
or  rather  I  said  without  any  consciousness  of 
being  venturesome,  that  the  sole  business  of 
a  novel-writer  was  to  give  us  pleasure ;  his 
sole  duty  was  to  give  it  to  us  within  decent 
and  prescribed  limits.  It  seemed  to  me  then 
that  the  assertion  was  so  self-evident  as  to  be 
hardly  worth  the  making ;  it  was  a  little  like 
saying  an  undisputed  thing  "  in  such  a  solemn 
way."  I  have  learned  since  how  profoundly 
I  was  mistaken  in  the  temper,  not  of  writers 
only,  but  of  readers  as  well,  —  how  far  re- 
mote I  stood  from  the  current  of  ethical 
activity.  It  is  needless  to  state  that  this  later 
knowledge  has  been  brought  to  me  by  the 
mouths  of  critics  :  sometimes  by  professional 
critics,  who  said  their  say  in  print ;  sometimes 
by  amateur  and  neighborly  critics,  who  ex- 
pressed theirs  frankly  in  speech.  It  is  need- 
less, also,  to  state  that,  of  the  two,  the  pro- 
fessional critics  —  brothers  and  sisters  of  my 
own  household  I  count  them  —  have  been 
infinitely  more  tolerant  of  my  shortcomings, 
more  lenient  in  their  remonstrances,  more  per- 


138  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

suasive  and  even  flattering  in  their  lines  of 
argument.  The  ordinary  reviewer,  anony- 
mous or  otherwise,  is  not  the  ruthless  de- 
stroyer, "  ferocious,  dishonest,  butcherly," 
whom  Mr.  Ho  wells  so  graphically  portrays, 
but  rather  a  kindly,  indifferent  sort  of  crea- 
ture, who  cares  so  little  what  you  think  that 
even  his  reproaches  wear  an  air  of  gentle  and 
friendly  unconcern. 

In  all  cases,  however,  the  verdict  reached 
was  practically  the  same.  The  business  of 
fiction  is  to  elevate  our  moral  tone ;  to  teach 
us  the  stern  lessons  of  life  ;  to  quicken  our 
conceptions  of  duty ;  to  show  us  the  dark 
abysses  of  fallen  nature ;  to  broaden  our 
spiritual  vistas ;  to  destroy  our  old  comfort- 
able creeds  ;  to  open  our  half-closed  eyes  ;  to 
expand  our  souls  with  the  generous  senti- 
ments of  humanity;  to  vex  us  with  social 
problems  and  psychological  conundrums ;  to 
gird  us  with  chain  armor  for  our  daily  bat- 
tles ;  to  do  anything  or  everything,  in  short, 
except  simply  give  us  pleasure.  It  is  not 
forbidden  us,  to  be  sure,  to  take  delight,  if 
we  can,  in  the  system  of  instruction  ;  a  good 
child,  we  are  told,  should  always  love  its  les- 


PLEASURE:  A  HERESY.  139 

sons;  but  the  really  important  thing  is  to 
study  and  know  them  by  heart.  Verily 

"  This  rugged  virtue  makes  me  gasp  "  ! 

Why  should  the  word  "  pleasure,"  when  used 
in  connection  with  literature,  send  a  cold 
chill  down  our  strenuous  nineteenth-century 
spines?  It  is  a  good  and  charming  word, 
caressing  in  sound  and  softly  exhilarating  in 
sense.  As  in  a  dream,  it  shows  us  swiftly 
rich  minutes  by  a  winter  firelight,  with  "  The 
Eve  of  St.  Agnes  "  held  in  our  happy  hands  ; 
long,  lazy  summer  afternoons  spent  right  joy- 
ously in  company  with  Emma  Woodhouse  and 
Mr.  Knightley  ;  or,  perhaps,  hours  of  content, 
lost  in  the  letters  of  Charles  Lamb,  dear  to 
us  alike  in  all  seasons  and  in  all  moods,  a 
heritage  of  delight  as  long  as  life  shall  last. 
I  do  not,  indeed,  as  I  have  been  accused  of 
doing,  employ  the  word  "  pleasure  "  as  synony- 
mous with  amusement.  Amusement  is  merely 
one  side  of  pleasure,  but  a  very  excellent 
side,  against  which,  in  truth,  I  have  no  evil 
word  to  urge.  The  gods  forbid  such  base  and 
savorless  ingratitude  !  This  is  not  at  best  a 
merry  world.  "  There  is  a  certain  grief  in 


140  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

things  as  they  are,  in  man  as  he  has  come  to 
be ;  "  and  the  background  of  our  lives  is  a 
steady,  un deviating  sadness.  Who,  then,  has 
not  felt  that  sudden  lifting  of  the  spirits,  that 
quick  purging  of  black,  melancholy  vapors 
from  the  brain,  as  wise  old  Burton  would  ex- 
press it,  when  some  fine  jest  appeals  irresis- 
tibly to  one's  sense  of  humor !  There  comes  to 
the  alert  mind  at  such  a  moment  a  distinct 
revelation  of  contentment ;  a  conscious  thought 
that  it  is  well  to  be  alive,  and  to  hear  that 
nimble  witticism  which  has  so  warmed  and 
tickled  one's  fancy.  "  Live  merrily  as  thou 
canst,"  says  Burton,  "  for  by  honest  mirth  we 
cure  many  passions  of  the  mind.  A  gay  com- 
panion is  as  a  wagon  to  him  that  is  wearied 
by  the  way." 

If  amusement  can  help  us  so  materially 
in  our  daily  life,  which  is  a  daily  struggle  as 
well,  how  much  more  pleasure  !  —  pleasure 
which  is  the  rightful  goal  of  art,  just  as  know- 
ledge is  the  rightful  goal  of  science.  "  Art," 
says  Winckelmann,  "  is  the  daughter  of  Plea- 
sure ; "  and  as  Demeter  sought  for  Perse- 
phone with  resistless  fervor  and  desire,  so 
Pleasure  seeks  for  Art,  languishing  in  sunless 


PLEASURE:  A  HERESY.  141 

gloom,  and,  having  found  her,  expresses 
through  her  the  joy  and  beauty  of  existence, 
and  lives  again  herself  in  the  possession  of 
her  fair  child,  while  the  whole  earth  bubbles 
into  laughter.  We  cannot  separate  these  two 
without  exchanging  sunlight  for  frost  and  the 
cold,  dark  winter  nights.  Mr.  E.  S.  Dallas, 
who,  in  those  charming  volumes  pleadingly 
entitled  "  The  Gay  Science,"  has  made  a  gal- 
lant fight  for  pleasure  as  the  end  of  art,  and 
for  criticism  as  the  path  by  which  that  end 
is  reached,  shows  us  very  clearly  and  very 
persuasively  that,  in  all  ages  and  in  all  na- 
tions, there  has  been  a  natural,  wholesome, 
outspoken  conviction  that  art  exists  for  plea- 
sure, and,  pleasing,  instructs  as  well.  There 
is  a  core  of  truth,  he  grants,  in  the  Horatian 
maxim  that  art  may  be  profitable  as  well  as 
delightful,  "  since  it  always  holds  that  wis- 
dom's ways  are  ways  of  pleasantness,  that  en- 
during pleasure  comes  only  out  of  healthful 
action,  and  that  amusement,  as  mere  amuse- 
ment, is  in  its  own  place  good  if  it  be  but 
innocent.  There  is  profit  in  art,  as  there  is 
gain  in  godliness,  and  policy  in  an  honest  life. 
But  we  are  not  to  pursue  art  for  profit,  nor 


142  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

godliness  for  gain,  nor  honesty  because  it  is 
politic." 

This,  then,  is  the  earliest  lesson  that  the 
student  of  art  has  to  learn  :  that  it  exists  for 
pleasure,  but  for  a  pleasure  that  may  be 
profitable,  and  that  stands  in  no  sort  of  oppo- 
sition to  truth.  "  Science,"  says  Mr.  Dallas, 
"  gives  us  truth  without  reference  to  pleasure, 
but  immediately  and  chiefly  for  the  sake  of 
knowledge.  Art  gives  us  truth  without  ref- 
erence to  knowledge,  but  immediately  and 
mainly  for  the  sake  of  pleasure."  The  test 
of  science,  then,  must  always  be  an  increase  of 
knowledge,  of  proven  and  demonstrable  facts  ; 
the  test  of  art  must  always  be  an  increase 
of  pleasure,  of  conscious  and  sentient  joy. 
"  What  is  good  only  because  it  pleases,"  says 
Dr.  Johnson,  "  cannot  be  pronounced  good 
until  it  has  been  found  to  please." 

The  joy  that  is  born  of  art  is  not  always  a 
simple  or  easily  analyzed  emotion.  The  plea- 
sure we  take  in  looking  at  the  soft,  white, 
dimpled  Venus  of  the  Capitol  is  something 
very  different  from  that  strange  tugging  at 
our  heart-strings  when  we  first  see  the  sad 
and  scornful  beauty  of  the  Venus  of  Milo,  or 


PLEASURE:    A   HERESY.  143 

the  curious  pity  with  which  we  watch  the 
dejected  Cupid  of  the  Vatican  hanging  his 
lovely  head.  But  with  both  the  Venus  of 
Milo  and  the  Vatican  Cupid,  the  sensation  of 
pleasure  they  afford  is  greater  than  the  sen- 
sation of  pain,  or  pity,  or  regret.  It  triumphs 
wholly  over  our  other  emotions,  and  gains 
fullness  from  the  conflict  of  our  thoughts. 
We  feel  many  things,  but  we  feel  pleasure 
most  of  all,  and  this  is  the  final  test  and  the 
final  victory  of  art.  In  the  same  manner,  the 
mixed  emotions  with  which  we  listen  to  music 
resolve  themselves  ultimately  to  pleasure  in 
that  music ;  and  the  mixed  emotions  with 
which  we  read  poetry  resolve  themselves  ulti- 
mately to  pleasure  in  that  poetry.  If  it  were 
otherwise,  we  should  know  that  the  music  and 
the  poetry  had  failed  in  their  crucial  trial.  If 
we  did  not  feel  more  pleasure  than  pain  in  the 
tragedy  of  "  Othello,"  it  would  not  be  a  great 
play.  That  we  do  feel  more  pleasure  than 
pain,  that  our  pleasure  is  subtly  fed  by  our 
pain,  proves  it  to  be  a  masterpiece  of  art. 

There  is  still  another  point  to  urge.  While 
art  may  instruct  as  well  as  please,  it  can  nev- 
ertheless be  true  art  without  instructing,  but 


144  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

not  without  pleasing.  The  former  quality 
is  accidental,  the  latter  essential,  to  its  being. 
"  Enjoyment,"  says  Schiller,  "  may  be  only  a 
subordinate  object  in  life ;  it  is  the  highest 
in  art."  We  cannot  say  that  "  The  Eve  of 
St.  Agnes  "  teaches  us,  directly  or  indirectly, 
anything  whatever.  The  trembling  lovers, 
the  withered  Angela,  the  revelers, 

"  The  carved  angels,  ever  eager-eyed," 

the  storm  without,  the  fragrant  warmth  and 
light  within,  are  all  equally  innocent  of  moral 
emphasis.  Even  the  Beadsman  is  not  worked 
up,  as  he  might  have  been,  into  a  didactic 
agent.  But  every  beauty-laden  line  is  rich  in 
pleasure,  the  whole  poem  is  an  inheritance 
of  delight.  I  never  read  it  without  being  re- 
minded afresh  of  that  remonstrance  offered 
so  gently  by  Keats  to  Shelley,  —  by  Keats, 
who  was  content  to  be  a  poet,  to  Shelley, 
who  would  also  be  a  reformer  :  "  You  will,  I 
am  sure,  forgive  me  for  sincerely  remarking 
that  you  might  curb  your  magnanimity,  and 
be  more  of  an  artist,  and  load  every  rift 
of  your  subject  with  ore."  Load  every  rift  of 
your  subject  with  ore,  —  there  spoke  the  man 


PLEASURE:  A  HERESY.  145 

who  claimed  no  more  for  himself  than  that 
he  had  loved  "  the  principle  of  beauty  in  all 
things,"  and  to  whose  hushed  and  listening 
soul  the  cry  of  Shelley's  "  divine  discontent " 
rang  jarringly  in  the  stillness  of  the  night. 
If  the  poetry  of  Keats,  a  handful  of  scattered 
jewels  left  us  by  a  dying  boy,  is,  as  Matthew 
Arnold  admits,  more  solid  and  complete  than 
Shelley's  superb  and  piercing  song,  to  what 
is  this  due,  save  that  Keats  possessed,  in  ad- 
dition to  his  poetic  gift,  the  tranquil  artist 
soul ;  content,  as  Goethe  was  content,  to 
love  the  principle  of  beauty,  and  to  be  in 
sympathy  with  the  great  living  past  which 
has  nourished,  and  still  nourishes,  the  living 
present.  The  passion  for  reconstructing  so- 
ciety, and  for  distributing  pamphlets  as  a 
first  step  in  the  reconstruction,  had  no  part 
in  his  artistic  development.  The  errors  of  his 
fellow-mortals  touched  him  lightly  ;  their  su- 
perstitions did  not  trouble  him  at  all ;  their 
civil  rights  and  inherited  diseases  were  not 
matters  of  daily  thought  and  analysis.  But 
what  he  had  to  give  them  he  gave  unstinted- 
ly, and  we  to-day  are  rich  in  the  fullness  of 
his  gift.  "  The  proper  and  immediate  object 


146  POINTS  OF  VIEW. 

of  poetry,"  says  Coleridge,  "  is  the  commu- 
nication of  immediate  pleasure ;  "  and  are  our 
lives  so  joyous  that  this  boon  may  go  un- 
recognized and  unregarded  ?  Which  is  best 
for  us  in  this  chilly  world,  —  that  which 
pleases,  but  does  not  instruct,  like  "  The  Eve 
of  St.  Agnes,"  or  that  which  instructs,  but  does 
not  please,  like  Dr.  Ibsen's  "  Ghosts  "  ?  I  do 
not  say,  which  is  true  art?  because  the  rela- 
tive positions  of  the  two  authors  forbid  com- 
parison ;  but,  judged  by  the  needs  of  human- 
ity, which  is  the  finer  gift  to  earth  ?  If,  with 
Pliny,  we  seek  an  escape  from  mortality  in 
literature,  which  shall  be  our  choice  ?  If,  with 
Dr.  Johnson,  we  require  that  a  book  should 
help  us  either  to  enjoy  life  or  to  endure  it, 
which  shall  we  take  for  a  friend  ? 

"Everything  that  is  any  way  beautiful  is 
beautiful  in  itself,  and  terminates  in  itself," 
says  Marcus  Aurelius  ;  and  the  pleasure  we 
derive  from  a  possession  of  beauty  has  char- 
acteristic completeness  and  vitality.  This 
pleasure  is  not  only,  as  we  are  so  often  told, 
a  temporary  escape  from  pain ;  it  is'  not  a 
negation,  a  mere  cessation  of  suffering  ;  it  is 
not  necessarily  preceded  by  craving  or  fol- 


PLEASURE:  A  HERESY.  147 

lowed  by  satiety ;  it  is  emphatically  not  a  mat- 
ter of  prospect  as  Shelley  would  have  us 
believe ; l  it  is  a  matter  of  conscious  posses- 
sion. "  Vivre,  c'est  penser  et  sentir  son 
ame ;  "  and  when  a  happy  moment,  complete 
and  rounded  as  a  pearl,  falls  into  the  tossing 
ocean  of  life,  it  is  never  wholly  lost.  For  our 
days  are  made  up  of  moments  and  our  years 
of  days,  and  every  swift  realization  of  a  law- 
ful joy  is  a  distinct  and  lasting  gain  in  our 
onward  flight  to  eternity. 

It  seems  to  me  strangely  cruel  that  this 
philosophy  of  pleasure  should  be  so  ruthlessly 
at  variance  with  the  ethical  criticism  of  our 
day.  If  it  has  come  down  to  us  as  a  gracious 
gift  from  the  most  cheerful  and  not  the  least 
wholesome  of  heathens,  it  has  been  broadened 
and  brightened  into  fresh  comeliness  by  the 
spirit  of  Christianity,  which  is,  above  all  things, 
a  spirit  of  lawful  and  recognized  joy.  No- 
thing is  more  plain  to  us  in  the  teaching  of  the 
early  Church  than  that  asceticism  is  for  the 
chosen  few,  and  enjoyment,  diffused,  genial, 
temperate,  and  pure  enjoyment,  is  for  the 

1  "  Pain  or  pleasure,  if  subtly  analyzed,  will  be  found  to 
consist  entirely  in  prospect." 


148  POJNTS   OF   VIEW. 

many.  "  Put  on,  therefore,  gladness  that  hath 
always  favor  with  God,  and  is  acceptable  unto 
him,  and  delight  thyself  in  it ;  for  every  man 
that  is  glad  doeth  the  things  that  are  good, 
and  thinketh  good  thoughts,  despising  grief."  l 
Through  all  the  centuries,  rational  Christianity 
has  still  taught  us  bravely  to  endure  what  we 
must,  and  gratefully  to  enjoy  what  we  can. 
There  is  a  very  charming  and  sensible  letter  on 
this  point,  written  by  the  Abbe  Duval  to  Ma- 
dame de  Remusat,  who  was  disposed  to  re- 
proach herself  a  little  for  her  own  happiness, 
and  to  think  that  she  had  no  right  to  be  so 
comfortable  and  so  well  content. 

"  You  say  that  you  are  happy,"  writes  this 
gentlest  and  wisest  of  confessors  ;  "  why  then 
distress  yourself  ?  Your  happiness  is  a  proof 
of  God's  love  toward  you  ;  and  if  in  your  heart 
you  truly  love  Him,  can  you  refuse  to  respond 
to  the  divine  benevolence  ?  .  .  .  Engrave 
upon  your  conscience  this  fundamental  truth  : 
that  religion  demands  order  above  all  things ; 
and  that,  since  the  institutions  of  society  have 
been  allowed  and  consecrated,  there  is  encour- 
agement for  those  duties  by  which  they  are 

1  Shepherd  of  Hernias. 


PLEASURE:   A  HERESY.  149 

maintained.  .  .  .  But  especially  banish  from 
your  mind  the  error  that  our  pains  alone  are  ac- 
ceptable to  God.  A  general  willingness  to  bear 
trial  is  enough.  Never  fear  but  life  and  time 
will  bring  it.  Dispose  yourself  beforehand  to 
resignation,  and  meanwhile  thank  God  inces- 
santly for  the  peace  which  pervades  your  lot." 
This  is  something  very  different  from  Bus- 
kin's ethics, —  from  the  plain  statement  that 
we  have  no  right  to  be  happy  while  our  brother 
suffers,  no  right  to  put  feathers  in  our  own 
child's  hat,  while  somebody  else's  child  goes 
featherless  and  ragged.  But  there  is  a  certain 
staying  power  in  the  older  and  simpler  doctrine, 
and  an  admirable  truth  in  the  gentle  suggestion 
that  we  need  not  vex  ourselves  too  deeply  with 
the  notion  of  our  ultimate  freedom  from  trial. 
It  was  not  given  to  Madame  de  Remusat,  any 
more  than  it  is  given  to  us,  to  ride  in  untrou- 
bled gladness  over  a  stony  world.  All  that  she 
attained,  all  that  we  can  hope  for,  are  distinct 
and  happy  moments,  brief  intervals  from 
pain,  or  from  that  rational  ennui  which  is  in- 
separable from  the  conditions  of  human  life. 
But  I  cannot  agree  with  the  long  list  of  philo- 
sophers and  critics,  from  Kant  and  Schopen- 


150  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

\ 

hauer  down  to  Mr.  Dallas,  who  have  taught 
that  these  passing  moments  are  negative  in 
their  character ;  that  they  are  hidden  from  our 
consciousness  and  elude  our  scrutiny,  —  exist- 
ing while  we  are  content  simply  to  enjoy  them, 
vanishing,  if,  like  Psyche,  we  seek  to  under- 
stand our  joy.  The  trained  intelligence  grasps 
its  pleasures,  and  recognizes  them  as  such  ;  not 
after  they  have  fled,  and  linger  only,  a  golden 
haze,  in  memory,  but  alertly,  in  the  present, 
while  they  still  lie  warm  in  the  hollow  of  the 
heart.  There  is  indeed  a  certain  breathless 
and  unconscious  delight  in  life  itself,  which  is 
born  of  our  ceaseless  struggle  to  live,  a  sweet- 
ness of  honey  snatched  from  the  lion's  mouth. 
This  delight  is  common  to  all  men,  and  is 
probably  keenest  in  those  who  struggle  hardest. 
When  society  is  reorganized  on  a  Utopian 
basis,  and  nobody  has  any  further  need  to 
elbow  his  own  way  through  hardships  and  dif- 
ficulties, there  will  be  one  joy  less  in  the 
world ;  and,  missing  it,  many  people  will  real- 
ize that  all  which  made  life  worth  having  has 
been  softened  and  improved  out  of  existence. 
They  will  cease  to  value,  and  refuse  to  possess, 
that  which  costs  them  nothing  to  preserve. 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


PLEASURE-.   A  HERESY.  151 

This  fundamental  happiness  in  life,  and  in 
the  enforced  activity  by  which  it  is  maintained, 
is  hidden  from  our  consciousness.  We  feel 
the  hardships,  and  do  not  especially  feel  any 
relish  in  ceaselessly  combating  them,  though 
the  relish  is  there ;  not  keen  enough  for  palpa- 
ble felicity,  but  vital  enough  to  keep  the  human 
race  alive.  All  other  pleasures,  however,  we 
should  train  ourselves  to  enjoy.  They  flow 
from  many  sources,  and  are  fitted  to  many 
moods.  They  are  fed  alike  by  our  most  secret 
emotions  and  by  our  severest  toil,  by  the  sim- 
plest thing  in*  nature  and  by  the  utmost  sub- 
tlety of  art.  A  primrose  by  a  river's  brim 
often  makes  its  appeal  as  vainly  as  does  Ham- 
let, or  the  Elgin  Marbles.  What  we  need  is, 
not  more  cultivation,  but  a  recognized  habit 
of  enjoyment.  There  is,  I  am  told,  though 
I  cannot  speak  from  experience,  a  very  high 
degree  of  pleasure  in  successfully  working  out 
a  mathematical  problem.  Burton  confesses 
frankly  that  his  impelling  motive,  in  long 
hours  of  research,  was  primarily  his  own  grati- 
fication. "  The  delight  is  it  I  aim  at,  so  great 
pleasure,  such  sweet  content,  there  is  in  study." 
I  think  the  most  beautiful  figure  in  recent  lit- 


152  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

erature  is  Mr.  Pater's  Marius  the  Epicurean, 
whose  life,  regarded  from  the  outside,  is  but 
a  succession  of  imperfect  results,  yet  who,  de- 
serted and  dying,  counts  over  with  a  patient 
and  glad  heart  the  joys  he  has  been  permitted 
to  know. 

"  Like  a  child  thinking  over  the  toys  it  loves, 
one  after  another,  that  it  may  fall  asleep  so, 
and  the  sooner  forget  all  about  them,  he  would 
try  to  fix  his  mind,  as  it  were  impassively,  on 
all  the  persons  he  had  loved  in  life,  —  on  his 
love  for  them,  dead  or  living,  grateful  for  his 
love  or  not,  rather  than  on  theirs  for  him,  — 
letting  their  images  pass  away  again,  or  rest 
with  him,  as  they  would.  One  after  another, 
he  suffered  those  faces  and  voices  to  come  and 
go,  as  in  some  mechanical  exercise ;  as  he 
might  have  repeated  all  the  verses  he  knew  by 
heart,  or  like  the  telling  of  beads,  one  by  one, 
with  many  a  sleepy  nod  between  whiles." 

Here  is  a  profound  truth,  delicately  and  rev- 
erently conveyed.  That  which  is  given  us  for 
our  joy  is  ours  as  long  as  life  shall  last ;  not 
passing  away  with  the  moment  of  enjoyment, 
but  dwelling  with  us,  and  enriching  us  to  the 
end.  The  memory  of  a  past  pleasure,  derived 


PLEASURE:  A  HERESY.  153 

from  any  lawful  source,  is  a  part  of  the  plea- 
sure itself,  a  vital  part,  which  remains  in  our 
keeping  as  long  as  we  recognize  and  cherish  it. 
Thus,  the  pleasure  obtained  from  seeing  the 
Venus  of  Milo  or  reading  "  The  Eve  of  St.  Ag- 
nes "  is  not  ended  when  we  have  left  the  Louvre 
or  closed  the  book.  It  becomes  a  portion  of 
our  inheritance,  a  portion  of  the  joy  of  living ; 
and  the  statue  and  the  poem  have  fulfilled  their 
allotted  purpose  in  yielding  us  this  delight. 
There  is  a  curious  fashion  nowadays  of  criticis- 
ing art  and  poetry,  and  even  fiction,  with  scant 
reference  to  the  pleasure  for  which  they  exist ; 
yet  a  rational  estimate  of  these  things  is  hardly 
possible  from  any  other  standpoint.  Mr.  Kus- 
kin,  we  know,  has  invented  that  pleasing  nov- 
elty, ethical  art-criticism,  and,  by  its  means,  as 
Mr.  Dallas  frankly  admits,  he  has  made,  not 
the  criticism  only,  but  the  art  itself,  intelligi- 
ble and  palatable  to  his  English  readers.  It 
would  seem  as  if  they  hardly  held  themselves 
justified  in  enjoying  a  thing  unless  there  was 
a  moral  meaning  back  of  it,  a  moral  principle 
involved  in  their  own  happiness.  This  mean- 
ing and  this  principle  Mr.  Ruskin  has  supplied, 
bringing  to  bear  upon  his  task  all  the  earnest- 


154  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

ness  and  sincerity  of  his  spirit,  all  the  wonder- 
ful charm  and  beauty  of  a  winning  and  per- 
suasive eloquence.  It  is  well-nigh  impossible 
to  withstand  his  appeals,  they  are  so  irresisti- 
bly worded  ;  and  it  is  only  when  we  have  with- 
drawn from  his  seductive  influence,  to  think  a 
little  for  ourselves,  that  we  realize  how  much 
of  his  criticism,  as  criticism,  is  valueless,  be- 
cause it  consists  in  analyzing  motives  rather 
than  in  estimating  results.  He  assumes  that 
the  first  interest  in  a  picture  is,  what  did  the 
painter  intend  ?  the  second  interest  is,  how  did 
he  carry  out  his  intention  ?  whereas  the  one 
really  important  and  paramount  consideration 
in  art  is  workmanship.  We  have,  many  of  us, 
the  artist's  soul,  but  few  the  artist's  fingers. 
It  is  a  pleasant  pastime  to  decipher  the  men- 
tal attitude  of  the  painter ;  it  is  essential  to  un- 
derstand the  quality  and  limit  of  his  powers. 

Reading  Mr.  Raskin's  criticisms  on  Tinto- 
ret's  pictures  in  the  Scuola  di  S.  Rocco  —  on 
the  Annunciation  particularly  —  is  very  much 
like  listening  to  a  paper  in  a  Browning  Society. 
Perhaps  the  poet,  perhaps  the  painter,  did  mean 
all  that.  It  is  manifestly  impossible  to  prove 
they  did  n't,  inasmuch  as  death  has  removed 


PLEASURE:   A  HERESY.  155 

them  from  any  chance  of  interrogation.  But 
by  what  mysterious  and  exclusive  insight  have 
Mr.  Euskin  and  the  Browning  student  found 
it  out?  The  interpretation  is  not  suggested 
as  feasible,  it  is  asserted  as  a  fact;  though 
precisely  how  it  has  been  reached  we  are  not 
suffered  to  know.  Many  unkind  and  severe 
things  have  been  said  about  judicial  criticism, 
but  Mr.  Ruskin's  criticism  is  not  judicial, — 
which  infers  an  application  of  governing  prin- 
ciples ;  it  is  dogmatic,  the  unhesitating  expres- 
sion of  a  personal  sentiment.  He  shows  you 
Giotto's  frescoes  in  the  cloister  of  Santa  Maria 
Novella  ;  he  pleads  with  you  very  prettily  and 
charmingly  to  admire  the  Birth  of  the  Virgin  ; 
he  points  out  to  you  with  rather  puzzling  pre- 
cision exactly  what  the  painter  intended  to  im- 
ply by  every  detail  of  the  work.  This  is  pleas- 
ant enough  ;  but  suppose  you  don't  really  care 
about  the  Birth  of  the  Virgin  when  you  see  it ; 
suppose  you  fail  to  follow  the  guiding  finger 
that  reveals  to  you  its  significance  and  beauty. 
What  happens  then  ?  Mr.  Ruskin  retorts  in 
the  severest  manner,  and  with  a  degree  of  scorn 
that  seems  hardly  warranted  by  the  contin- 
gency :  "  If  you  can  be  pleased  with  this,  you 


156  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

can  see  Florence.  But  if  not,  by  all  means 
amuse  yourself  there,  if  you  find  it  amusing, 
as  long  as  you  like  ;  you  can  never  see  it." 

So  Florence  with  all  its  loveliness  is  lost  to 
you,  unless  you  can  sufficiently  sympathize  with 
one  small  fresco.  It  would  be  as  reasonable 
to  say  that  all  English  literature  is  lost  to  you, 
unless  you  truly  enjoy  "Conius;  "  that  all  music 
is  lost  to  you,  unless  you  delight  in  "Parsifal." 
It  is  the  special  privilege  of  ethical  criticism 
to  take  this  exclusive  and  didactic  form ;  to 
bid  you  admire  a  thing,  not  because  it  is  beau- 
tiful in  itself,  but  because  it  has  a  subtle  lesson 
to  convey,  —  a  lesson  of  which,  it  is  urbanely 
hinted,  you  stand  particularly  in  need.  On 
precisely  the  same  principle,  you  are  com- 
manded to  cleave  to  Tolstoi,  not  because  he 
has  written  able  novels,  but  because  those 
novels  teach  a  great  many  things  which  it  is 
desirable  you  should  know  and  believe;  you 
are  bidden  to  revere  George  Meredith,  not 
because  he  has  given  the  world  some  brilliant 
and  captivating  books,  but  because  these  books 
contain  a  tonic  element  fitted  for  your  moral 
reconstruction.  If  you  do  not  sufficiently  value 
these  admirable  lessons,  then  you  are  told,  in 


PLEASURE:   A   HERESY.  157 

language  every  whit  as  contemptuous  as  Mr. 
Euskin's,  to  amuse  yourself,  by  all  means,  with 
Lever,  and  Gaboriau,  and  Jules  Verne ;  for 
all  higher  fiction  is,  like  the  art  of  Florence, 
a  sealed  book  to  your  understanding. 

"  Most  men,"  says  Mr.  Froude,  "  feel  the 
necessity  of  being  on  some  terms  with  their  con- 
science, at  their  own  expense  or  at  another's  ;  " 
and  one  very  popular  method  of  balancing  their 
score  is  by  exacting  from  art  and  literature 
that  serious  ethical  purpose  which  they  hesitate 
to  intrude  too  prominently  into  their  daily  lives, 
rightly  opining  that  it  gives  much  less  trouble 
in  books.  So  prevalent  is  this  tone  in  mod- 
ern thought  that  even  a  consummate  critic  like 
Mr.  Bagehot  is  capable  of  saying,  in  one  of  his 
supremely  moral  moments,  that  Byron's  poems 
"  taught  nothing,  and  therefore  are  forgotten." 
Et  tu,  Brute !  Such  a  sentence  from  such  a 
pen  makes  me  realize  something  of  the  bitter- 
ness with  which  the  dying  Caesar  covered  up  his 
face  from  his  most  trusted  friend.  That  Lord 
Byron's  poems  are  forgotten  is  rather  a  matter 
of  doubt ;  that  they  are  given  over  entirely  into 
the  hands  of  "  a  stray  schoolboy  "  is  a  hazard- 
ous assertion  to  make  ;  but  to  say  that  they  are 


158  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

forgotten  because  they  teach  nothing  is  to  strike 
at  the  very  life  and  soul  of  poetry.  It  does 
not  exist  to  teach,  but  to  please ;  it  can  cease 
to  exist  only  when  it  ceases  to  give  pleasure. 

Perhaps  what  Mr.  Bagehot  meant  to  imply 
is  that  it  would  be  a  difficult  task  to  review 
Byron's  poetry  after  the  approved  modern 
fashion ;  to  assign  him,  as  we  assign  more  con- 
templative and  analytic  poets,  a  moral  raison 
d'etre.  Pick  up  a  criticism  of  Mr.  Browning, 
for  example,  and  this  is  the  first  thing  we  see : 
"  What  was  the  kernel  of  Browning's  ethical 
teaching,  and  how  does  he  apply  its  principles 
to  life,  religion,  art,  and  love?"1  It  would 
be  as  manifestly  absurd  to  ask  this  question 
about  Byron  as  it  would  be  to  review  Fielding 
from  the  standpoint  adapted  for  Tolstoi,  or  to 
discuss  Sheridan  from  the  same  field  of  view 
as  Ibsen.  With  the  earlier  writers  it  was  a 
question  of  workmanship  ;  with  our  present 
favorites  it  has  become  a  question  of  ethics. 
Yet  when  we  seek  for  simple  edification,  as 
our  plain-spoken  grandfathers  understood  the 
word,  as  many  innocent  people  understand  it 
now,  the  new  school  seems  as  remote  from  fur- 

1  Quarterly  Eeview. 


PLEAS  URE :  A  HERES  Y.  1 59 

nishing  it  as  the  old.  Browning,  Tolstoi',  and 
Ibsen  have  their  own  methods  of  dealing  with 
sin,  and  richly  suggestive  and  illustrative 
methods  they  are.  The  lessons  taught  may  be 
of  a  highly  desirable  kind,  but  I  doubt  their 
practical  efficacy  in  our  common  working  lives ; 
and  I  cannot  think  this  possible  efficacy  war- 
rants their  intrusion  into  art.  Great  truths, 
unconsciously  revealed  and  as  unconsciously 
absorbed,  have  been,  in  all  ages,  the  soul  of 
poetry,  the  subtle  life  of  fiction.  These  truths, 
always  in  harmony  with  the  natural  world  and 
with  the  vital  sympathies  of  man,  were  not 
put  forward  crudely  as  lessons  to  be  learned, 
but  primarily  as  pleasures  to  be  enjoyed ; 
and  through  our  "  sweet  content,"  as  Burton 
phrased  it,  we  came  into  our  heritage  of  know- 
ledge. To-day  both  poetry  and  fiction  have 
assumed  a  different  and  less  winning  attitude. 
They  have  grown  sensibly  didactic,  are  at 
times  almost  reproachful  in  their  tone,  and,  so 
far  from  striving  to  yield  us  pleasure,  to  in- 
crease our  "  sweet  content  "  with  life,  they  en- 
deavor, with  very  tolerable  success,  to  prevent 
our  being  happy  after  our  own  limited  fashion. 
Their  principal  mission  is  to  worry  us  vaguely 


160  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

about  our  souls  or  our  neighbors'  souls,  or  the 
social  order  which  we  did  not  establish,  and  the 
painful  problems  that  we  cannot  solve.  Our 
spirits,  at  all  times  restless  and  troubled,  re- 
spond with  quick  alarm  to  these  dismal  agita- 
tions ;  our  serenity  is  not  proof  against  the 
strain  ;  our  sense  of  humor  is  not  keen  enough 
to  cure  us  with  wholesome  laughter  ;  and  nine- 
teenth-century cultivation  consists  in  being 
miserable  for  misery's  sake,  and  in  saying 
solemnly  to  one  another  at  proper  intervals, 
"  This  is  the  eternal  progress  of  the  ages.  " 

It  was  a  curious  and  rather  melancholy  ex- 
perience, a  year  ago,  to  hear  the  comments  of 
those  patient  women  who  devoted  their  after- 
noons to  Ibsen  readings,  and  to  turning  over 
in  their  minds  the  new  and  unprofitable  situa- 
tions thus  suggested.  The  discussions  that 
followed  were  invariably  ethical,  never  critical ; 
they  had  reference  always  to  some  moral  co- 
nundrum offered  by  the  play,  never  to  the  ar- 
tistic or  dramatic  excellence  of  the  play  itself. 
"Was  Nora  Helmer  justified,  or  was  she  not,  in 
abandoning  her  children  with  explicit  confi- 
dence to  the  care  of  Mary  Ann?  Had  Dr. 
Wangel  a  right,  or  had  he  not,  to  annul  his 


PLEASURE:  A  HERESY.  161 

own  marriage  tie  with  the  primitive  simplicity 
of  the  king  of  Dahomey?  To  answer  such 
questions  as  these  has  become  our  notion  of 
literary  recreation,  and  there  is  something  pa- 
thetically droll  in  the  earnestness  with  which 
we  bend  our  wits  to  the  task.  Indeed,  poor 
little  Nora's  matrimonial  infelicities  threat- 
ened to  become  as  important  in  their  way  as 
those  of  Catherine  of  Aragon  or  Josephine 
Beauharnais,  and  we  talked  about  them  quite 
seriously  and  with  a  certain  awe.  The  un- 
flinching manner  in  which  Ibsen  has  followed 
Sir  Thomas  Browne's  advice,  "  Strive  not  to 
beautify  thy  corruption  !  "  commends  him,  nat- 
urally, to  that  large  class  of  persons  who  can 
tolerate  sin  only  when  it  is  dismal ;  and  Bau- 
delaire, praying  for  a  new  vice,  was  jocund 
in  comparison  with  our  Norwegian  dramatist, 
unwearyingly  analyzing  the  old  one.  Yet 
what  have  we  gained  from  the  rankness  of 
these  disclosures,  from  these  horrible  studies 
of  heredity,  these  hospital  and  madhouse 
sketches,  these  incursions  of  pathology  into  the 
realms  of  art?  What  shall  we  ever  gain  by 
beating  down  the  barriers  of  reserve  which 
civilized  communities  have  thought  fit  to  rear, 


162  POINTS   OF    VIEW. 

by  abandoning  that  wholesome  reticence  which 
is  the  test  of  self-restraint  ?  We  try  so  hard 
to  be  happy,  —  we  have  such  need,  each  of  his 
little  share  of  happiness  ;  yet  Ibsen,  troubling 
the  soul  more  even  than  he  troubles  the  senses, 
has  chosen  to  employ  his  God-given  genius  in 
deliberately  lessening  our  small  sum  of  human 
joy.  When  shall  we  cease  to  worship  at  such 
dark  altars  ?  When  shall  we  recognize,  with 
Goethe,  that  "  all  talent  is  wasted  if  the  sub- 
ject be  unsuitable  "  ?  "  When  shall  we  under- 
stand and  believe  that  "the  gladness  of  a  spirit 
is  an  index  of  its  power  "  ? 

"  To  live,"  says  Amiel,  "  we  must  conquer 
incessantly,  we  must  have  the  courage  to  be 
happy."  Enjoyment,  then,  is  not  our  common 
daily  portion,  to  be  stupidly  ignored  or  care- 
lessly cast  away.  It  is  something  we  must 
seek  courageously  and  intelligently,  distin- 
guishing the  pure  sources  from  which  it  flows, 
and  rightly  persuaded  that  art  is  true  and  good 
only  when  it  adds  to  our  delight.  For  this 
were  our  poets  and  dramatists,  our  painters 
and  novelists,  sent  to  us,  —  to  make  us  lawfully 
happier  in  a  hard  world,  to  help  us  smilingly 
through  the  gloom.  And  can  it  be  they  think 


PLEASURE:  A  HERESY.  163 

this  mission  beneath  their  august  consideration, 
unworthy  of  their  mighty  powers?  Why,  to 
have  given  pleasure  to  one  human  being  is  a 
recollection  that  sweetens  life  ;  and  what  should 
be  the  fervor  and  transport  of  him  to  whom  it 
has  been  granted  to  give  pleasure  to  genera- 
tions, to  add  materially  to  the  stored-up  glad- 
ness of  the  earth!  "Science  pales,"  says  Mr. 
Dallas,  "  age  after  age  is  forgotten,  and  age 
after  age  has  to  be  freshened ;  but  the  secret 
thinking  of  humanity,  embalmed  in  art,  sur- 
vives, as  nothing  else  in  life  survives."  This 
is  our  inheritance  from  the  past,  —  this  secret 
thinking  of  humanity,  embalmed  in  imper- 
ishable beauty,  and  enduring  for  our  delight. 
The  thinking  of  that  idle  vicar,  Robert  Her- 
rick,  when  he  sang,  on  a  fair  May  morning :  — 

"  Come,  let  us  go,  while  we  are  in  our  prime, 
And  take  the  harmless  folly  of  the  time  I 
We  shall  grow  old  apace,  and  die 
Before  we  know  our  liberty." 

The  thinking  of  Theocritus,  who,  lying  drow- 
sily on  the  hillside,  saw  the  sacred  waters  well- 
ing from  the  cool  caverns,  and  heard  the  little 
owl  cry  in  the  thorn  brake,  and  the  yellow  bees 
murmur  and  hum  in  the  soft  spicy  air  :  — 


164  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

"  All  breathed  the  scent  of  the  opulent  sum- 
mer, of  the  season  of  fruit.  Pears  and  apples 
were  rolling  at  our  feet ;  the  tender  branches, 
laden  with  wild  plums,  were  bowed  to  earth ; 
and  the  four-year-old  pitch  seal  was  loosened 
from  the  mouth  of  the  wine-jars." 

Here  is  art  attuned  to  the  simplest  forms 
of  pleasure,  yet  as  lasting  as  the  pyramids, 
—  a  whispered  charm  borne  down  the  current 
of  years  to  soothe  our  fretted  souls.  But  the 
tranquil  enjoyment  of  what  is  given  us  to 
enjoy  has  become  a  subtle  reproach  in  these 
days  of  restless  disquiet,  of  morbid  and  con- 
scious self  -  scrutiny,  when  we  have  forfeited 
our  sympathy  with  the  beliefs,  the  aspirations, 
and  the  "  sweet  content  "  that  linked  the  cen- 
turies together.  We  are  suffering  at  present 
from  a  glut  of  precepts,  a  surfeit  of  preceptors, 
and  have  grown  sadly  wise,  and  very  much 
cast  down  in  consequence.  We  lack,  as  Amiel 
says,  the  courage  to  be  happy,  and  glorify  our 
discontent  into  an  intellectual  barrier,  pluming 
ourselves  on  a  seriousness  that  may  not  be  di- 
verted. But  if  we  will  only  consent  to  calm 
our  fears,  to  quiet  our  scruples,  to  humble  our 
pride,  and  to  take  one  glad  look  into  the  world 


PLEASURE:  A  HERESY.  165 

of  art,  we  shall  see  it  bathed  in  the  golden  sun- 
light of  pleasure ;  and  we  shall  know  very  well 
that  didacticism,  whether  masquerading  as  a 
psychological  drama  or  a  socialistic  forecast, 
as  a  Sunday-school  story  or  a  deistical  novel, 
is  no  guide  to  that  enchanted  land. 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY. 

IT  is  one  of  the  most  delightful  things  about 
Miss  Edge  worth's  immortal  tales  for  children 
that  the  incidents  they  relate  have  a  knack  of 
remaining  indelibly  fixed  in  our  memories,  long 
after  we  have  succeeded  in  forgetting  the  more 
severely  acquired  information  of  our  school- 
days. Why,  for  instance,  do  I  vex  my  temper 
and  break  my  finger-nails  in  a  vain  effort  to 
untie  the  knotted  cord  of  every  bundle  that 
comes  to  the  house,  save  that  I  have  still  be- 
fore me  the  salutary  example  of  that  prudent 
little  Ben,  who  so  conscientiously  and  cheer- 
fully devoted  himself  to  unfastening  his  uncle's 
package  ?  "  You  may  keep  the  string  for  your 
pains,"  says  Mr.  Gresham,  with  pleasing  liber- 
ality. "Thank  you,  sir,"  replies  Ben,  with 
more  effusion  than  I  think  he  feels.  u  What 
an  excellent  whipcord  it  is !  "  And  so,  pocket- 
ing his  fee,  it  wins  for  him,  as  we  all  know,  the 
prize  at  Lady  Diana  Sweepstake's  great  arch- 
ery contest,  while  poor  Hal  forfeits  his  shot, 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY.  167 

and  loses  his  hat,  and  gets  covered  with  mud 
and  disgrace,  and  sprains  his  little  cousin  Pat- 
ty's ankle,  and  all  because  he  has  been  rash 
enough  to  cut  his  piece  of  cord.  Never  was 
moral  more  sternly  pointed,  not  even  in  the 
case  of  Miss  Jane  Taylor's  heedless  little 
Emily,  who  will  not  stoop  to  pick  up  a  pin,  and 
is  punished  by  the  loss  of  a  whole  day's  plea- 
sure, because,  owing  to  some  unexplained  in- 
tricacy of  her  toilet,  — 

"  She  could  not  stir, 
For  just  a  pin  to  finish  her.  " 

But  was  whipcord  such  a  costly  article  in 
Miss  Edgeworth's  time,  that  a  small  piece  of  it 
was  worth  so  much  trouble  and  pains?  We 
have  Hal's  testimony  that  twice  as  much  could 
have  been  bought  for  twopence ;  and  though 
Hal  is  but  a  graceless  young  scamp,  who  can- 
not be  induced  to  look  upon  twopence  with  be- 
coming reverence,  and  who  plainly  has  a  career 
of  want  and  misery  before  him,  yet  his  word 
on  this  matter  may  be  accepted  as  final.  At 
the  present  day,  the  value  of  a  bit  of  string 
saved  by  patient  dexterity  from  the  scissors  is 
so  infinitesimal  that  the  hoarding  up  of  match 
stumps,  after  the  fashion  of  a  certain  great 


168  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

banker,  would  really  seem  the  quicker  road  to 
wealth.  But  the  true  gain  in  these  minute 
economies  is  of  a  strictly  moral  nature,  and 
serves,  when  we  know  we  have  been  extravagant, 
to  balance  our  account  with  conscience.  The 
least  practical  of  us  have  some  petty  thrift 
dear  to  our  hearts,  some  one  direction  in  which 
we  love  to  scrimp.  I  have  known  wealthy  men 
who  grudged  themselves  and  their  families 
nothing  that  money  could  buy,  yet  were  made 
perfectly  miserable  by  the  amount  of  gas 
burned  nightly  in  their  homes.  They  roamed 
around  with  manifest  and  pitiful  uneasiness, 
stealthily  turning  down  a  burner  here  and  there, 
whenever  they  could  do  so  unperceived,  dim- 
ming the  glories  of  their  glass  and  gilding,  and 
reducing  upper  halls  and  familiar  stairways 
into  very  pitfalls  for  the  stumbling  of  the  un- 
wary. The  advent  of  lamps  has  brought  but 
scant  solace  to  these  sufferers,  for  their  econ- 
omy is,  in  fact,  much  older  than  the  gas  itself, 
and  flourished  exceedingly  in  the  days  of  wax 
tapers  and  tallow-dips.  We  read  in  the  vera- 
cious chronicles  of  "Cranford"  how  Miss  Matty 
Jenkyns,  so  thoughtlessly  generous  in  all  other 
matters,  had  for  her  one  pet  frugality  the  hoard- 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY.  169 

ing  of  her  candles,  and  by  how  many  intricate 
devices  the  dear  old  lady  sought  to  cherish  and 
protect  these  objects  of  her  tender  solicitude. 

"  They  (the  candles)  were  usually  brought 
in  with  tea,  but  we  only  burned  one  at  a  time. 
As  we  lived  in  constant  preparation  for  a 
friend  who  might  come  in  any  moment  (but 
who  never  did),  it  required  some  contriv- 
ance to  keep  them  of  the  same  length,  ready 
to  be  lighted,  and  to  look  as  if  we  burned  two 
always.  They  took  it  in  turns,  and,  whatever 
we  might  be  talking  about  or  doing,  Miss 
Matty's  eyes  were  habitually  fixed  upon  the 
candle,  ready  to  jump  up  and  extinguish  it, 
and  to  light  the  other,  before  they  had  become 
too  uneven  in  length  to  be  restored  to  equality 
in  the  course  of  the  evening." 

This  little  scene  of  innocent  deception  is 
finer,  in  its  way,  than  the  famous  newspaper 
paths  on  which  Miss  Deborah's  guests  step 
lightly  over  her  new  carpet  to  their  respective 
chairs.  We  sympathize  with  Miss  Matty's 
anxiety  about  her  tapers  because  it  represents 
one  phase  of  a  weakness  common  to  all  man- 
kind, and  far  remote,  we  trust,  from  mere 
vulgar  parsimony,  which,  seeking  to  stint  in  all 


170  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

things,  is,  by  its  very  nature,  incapable  of  a 
nice  spirit  of  selection.  Even  the  narrator  of 
"  Cranford,"  that  shadowy,  indistinguishable 
Mary  Smith,  who  contrives  so  cleverly  to  keep 
her  own  identity  in  the  background,  —  even  she 
consents  to  emerge  one  moment  from  her  chosen 
dimness,  and  to  claim  a  share  in  this  highly 
discriminating  economy.  String,  she  acknow- 
ledges, is  her  foible.  Like  the  excellent  Mr. 
Gresham,  she  would  preserve  it  from  destruc- 
tion at  the  most  liberal  expenditure  of  other 
people's  time  and  trouble.  "  My  pockets,"  she 
confesses,  "  get  full  of  little  hanks  of  it,  picked 
up  and  twisted  together,  ready  for  uses  that 
never  come.  I  am  seriously  annoyed  if  any 
one  cuts  the  string  of  a  parcel  instead  of  pa- 
tiently and  faithfully  undoing  it  fold  by  fold. 
How  people  can  bring  themselves  to  use  India- 
rubber  rings,  which  are  a  sort  of  deification 
of  string,  as  lightly  as  they  do,  I  cannot  ima- 
gine. To  me  an  India-rubber  ring  is  a  pre- 
cious treasure.  I  have  one  which  is  not  new  ; 
one  that  I  picked  up  off  the  floor  six  years 
ago.  I  have  really  tried  to  use  it,  but  my 
heart  failed  me,  and  I  could  not  commit  the 
extravagance." 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY. 

It  would  be  a  pity  to  spoil  this  vivacious 
description  by  a  touch  of  odious  modern  real- 
ism, and  to  hint  that  an  India-rubber  ring 
which  had  knocked  about  the  world  for  six  - 
years  must  have  parted  with  much  of  its  youth- 
ful elasticity,  and  would  be  of  comparatively 
little  use  to  any  one. 

Illustrious  examples  are  not  lacking  to  give 
dignity  and  weight  to  these  seemingly  trivial 
frugalities.  The  great,  and  wise,  and  mean 
Duke  of  Marlborough,  he  who  held  the  fate  of 
Europe  in  his  hands,  and  who  was,  without 
doubt,  the  first  of  English-speaking  generals, 
did  not  disdain  to  bend  his  mighty  mind  to  the 
contemplation  of  his  candle-ends,  or  to  the 
tender  protection  of  his  luggage.  Who  under- 
stood so  well  as  he  how  to  spend  a  thousand 
pounds,  and  save  a  shilling  ?  When  Prince 
Eugene  came  to  a  conference  in  his  tent,  the 
duke's  servant,  anxious  no  doubt  for  an  osten- 
tatious display,  had  the  temerity  to  light  four 
wax  tapers  in  honor  of  the  royal  guest,  which, 
when  Marlborough  perceived,  he  promptly  ex- 
tinguished, rating  the  unlucky  attendant  with 
such  caustic  severity  that  the  offense  ran  little 
likelihood  of  being  soon  repeated.  While  the 


172  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

great  pile  of  Blenheim  was  absorbing  countless 
thousands  in  its  slow  process  of  erection,  the 
duke  walked  every  morning  from  the  public 
rooms  at  Bath  to  his  own  lodging,  thereby 
saving  sixpence  daily,  and  affording  a  shining 
model  to  those  whose  favorite  economy  is  cab- 
hire.  He  walked  to  the  very  end,  this  con- 
sistent old  warrior  ;  walked  while  the  pangs  of 
illness  were  creeping  over  his  disabled  frame ; 
and  at  last,  when  he  could  save  no  more  six- 
pences, he  died,  and  left  nearly  two  million 
pounds  to  be  squandered  briskly  by  his  heirs. 

His  wife,  too,  the  beautiful,  brilliant,  high- 
tempered  Duchess  Sarah,  was  every  bit  as 
thrifty  as  her  lord.  She  built  the  triumphal 
arch  of  Blenheim  at  her  own  expense,  and 
wrangled  mightily  all  the  while  over  the  price 
of  lime,  "  sevenpence  half-penny  per  bushel, 
when  it  could  be  made  in  the  park."  She  was 
the  richest  peeress  in  England,  but  her  keen 
blue  eyes,  as  fiery  as  Marlborough's  own,  were 
ever  awake  to  any  attempted  depredation. 
Her  dressmaker,  one  Mrs.  Buda,  essayed,  not 
knowing  with  whom  she  had  to  deal,  to  hold 
back  from  her  some  yards  of  cloth  ;  whereupon 
the  duchess  borrowed  Mrs.  Buda's  diamond 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY.  173 

ring  "  for  a  pattern,"  and  refused  to  give  it 
up  until  the  stuff  was  returned.  She  under- 
stood also  the  admirable  art  of  utilizing  her 
friends,  and  there  is  a  delighf ul  letter  written 
by  her  to  Lord  Stair,  then  minister  at  France, 
commissioning  him  to  buy  her  a  night-gown, 
or  more  properly  a  dressing-gown,  "  easy  and 
warm,  with  a  light  silk  wadd  in  it,  such  as  are 
used  to  come  out  of  bed  and  gird  round,  with- 
out any  train  at  all,  but  very  full.  'T  is  no 
matter  what  color,  except  pink  or  yellow  —  no 
gold  or  silver  in  it;  but  some  pretty  striped 
satin  or  damask,  lined  with  a  tafetty  of  the 
same  color."  She  also  desires  for  her  daugh- 
ter, Lady  Harriet,  then  a  child  of  thirteen,  "  a 
monto  and  petticoat  to  go  abroad  in,  no  silver 
or  gold  in  it,  nor  a  stuff  that  is  dear,  but  a 
middling  one  that  may  be  worn  either  in  win- 
ter or  in  summer."  The  canny  duchess  pru- 
dently adds  that  she  will  wait  for  the  things 
until  "  no  one  need  be  troubled  with  the  cus- 
tom-house people,"  a  euphuism  worthy  of  an 
American  conscience,  and  she  thanks  Lord 
Stair  at  the  same  time  for  sending  her  "  a  pair 
of  bodyes,"  which  were  so  well-fitting,  and  evi- 
dently so  cheap,  that  she  will  have  two  more 


174  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

pairs  of  "  white  tabby  from  the  same  taylor." 
Fancy  asking  a  foreign  minister  to  purchase 
one's  stays,  and  wrappers,  and  little  daughter's 
petticoats,  and  to  please  wait  his  opportunity 
to  smuggle  them  in  without  duty ! 

Yet  "  Queen  Sarah  "  was  capable  of  sudden 
deeds  of  generosity  that  quite  take  away  our 
breath  by  their  magnificence,  and  so,  for  the 
matter  of  that,  was  another  noble  termagant, 
Queen  Elizabeth,  who  gave  away  right  royally 
with  one  hand,  even  while  she  held  out  the 
other  for  beggarly  gratuities.  We  see  her 
heaping  riches  into  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  lap, 
and  managing  to  get  a  great  deal  of  it  back 
again,  when  his  treasure-laden  ships  came 
slowly  to  port.  Nay,  did  she  not  seize  on  "a 
waistcoat  of  carnation  colour,  curiously  em- 
broidered," which  the  brave  navigator,  always 
passionately  addicted  to  fine  clothes,  had 
snatched  from  some  Spanish  galleon  for  the 
adornment  of  his  own  handsome  figure,  and 
which  the  queen  straightway  proceeded  to 
flaunt  as  a  stomacher  before  his  injured  eyes  ? 
If  we  read  a  list  of  Elizabeth's  New  Year  gifts, 
we  are  both  astonished  and  edified  by  their 
number  and  variety.  Here  is  Fulke  Greville 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY.  175 

presenting  his  sovereign  with  a  night-dress  ;  not 
a  wrapper  this  time,  but  a  genuine  night-dress, 
"  made  of  cambric,  wrought  about  the  collar 
and  sleeves  with  Spanish  work  of  roses  and 
letters,  and  a  night-coif  with  a  forehead-cloth 
of  the  same  work."  And  here  is  Mrs.  Carre 
offering  her  majesty  an  embroidered  cambric 
sheet ;  and  Dr.  Bayly,  one  of  the  court  physi- 
cians, arriving  brisk  and  early  with  a  pot  of 
green  ginger  under  his  arm ;  and  Mrs.  Amy 
Shelton  with  six  handkerchiefs  all  edged  with 
gold  and  silver  braid  ;  and  Sir  Philip  Sidney 
with  a  most  beautiful  cambric  smock,  "  and  a 
suite  of  ruffs  of  cut-work,  flourished  with  gold 
and  silver,  and  set  with  spangles  containing 
four  ounces  of  gold."  And  here,  best  of  all, 
are  several  gentlemen  of  rank,  who,  being  un- 
acquainted with  the  intricacies  of  the  female 
toilet,  feel  afraid  to  venture  upon  smocks,  and 
ruffs,  and  night-dresses,  so  solve  their  dilemma 
by  pluinply  handing  down  ten  pounds  apiece, 
a  practical  donation  which  the  virgin  monarch 
accepts  with  all  possible  alacrity  and  good-will. 
Elizabeth,  moreover,  was  known  to  be  a 
costly  and  often  a  sadly  unremunerative  guest 
when  it  pleased  her  to  visit  her  loyal  people. 


176  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

There  is  a  letter  written  by  the  Earl  of  Bed- 
ford to  Lord  Burleigh  that  is  positively  pathetic 
in  its  apprehension  of  the  impending  honor. 
"  I  trust  truly,"  says  the  expectant  host,  "  that 
your  lordship  will  have  in  remembrance  to 
provide  and  help  that  her  majesty's  tarrying 
be  not  above  two  nights  and  a  day,  for  so  long 
time  do  I  prepare."  As  it  was  one  of  the 
queen's  whims  to  give  scant  warning  of  her 
coming,  the  unfortunate  gentlemen  suddenly 
called  upon  to  harbor  their  sovereign  and  her 
suite  often  found  themselves  at  their  wits'  end 
for  food  and  entertainment ;  and  not  unfre- 
quently  it  happened  that,  after  days  of  ruinous 
expenditure,  they  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing 
their  prospects  as  blighted  as  their  larders. 
Lord  Henry  Berkely  lamenting  the  loss  of  his 
good  red  deer,  twenty-seven  of  which  were  slain 
in  one  day  —  in  their  owner's  absence,  be  it 
noted  —  for  Elizabeth's  diversion,  was  at  least 
a  happier  man  than  the  luckless  young  Rook- 
wood  of  Eustoii  Hall,  whom  her  majesty  re- 
quited for  his  hospitality  by  cruel  insult  and  im- 
prisonment. Even  King  John,  who  has  come 
down  to  us  in  history  as  the  least  profitable  of 
royal  guests,  could  not  well  do  worse  than  this, 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY.  177 

though  his  visits,  being  occasionally  of  longer 
duration,  were  just  so  much  harder  to  be  borne. 
In  the  chronicles  of  Joceliii  of  Brakelond,  we 
read  how  once  the  king  came  with  a  large  reti- 
nue to  the  convent  of  St.  Edmundsbury,  and 
stayed  there  for  two  whole  weeks,  eating  up 
the  monk's  provisions  at  a  fearful  rate,  empty- 
ing the  cellars  of  their  choicest  wines,  and 
making,  no  doubt,  what  with  drunken,  swear- 
ing soldiers  and  insolent  court  parasites,  sad 
riot  and  confusion  within  those  peaceful  walls. 
At  last,  however,  the  weary  fortnight  was  over, 
and  the  guests  stood  marshaled  to  depart ;  but 
not  before  his  gracious  majesty  had  made 
offering,  as  guerdon  for  two  weeks'  entertain- 
ment, of  a  silk  cloak  to  cover  St.  Edmund's 
shrine,  which  same  cloak  was  promptly  bor- 
rowed back  again  by  one  of  the  royal  train, 
and  the  monks  beheld  it  no  more.  In  addition 
to  this  elusive  legacy,  which  left  the  shrine  as 
bare  as  it  found  it,  Jocelin  records  that  the 
monarch,  ere  he  rode  forth,  presented  the  con- 
vent with  the  handsome  sum  of  thirteen  pence, 
in  consideration  of  a  mass  being  said  for  his 
soul,  which  sorely  needed  all  the  spiritual  ali- 
ment the  good  monks  could  furnish  it.  We 


178  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

can  fancy  Abbot  Samson  standing  at  bis  mon- 
astery door,  and  regarding  tbose  thirteen  pence 
very  mucb  as  the  Genoese  consul  must  have  re- 
garded the  Duke  of  Kingston's  old  spectacles, 
which  the  dowager  duchess  tendered  him  in 
return  for  his  hospitality ;  or  as  Commodore 
Barnet  regarded  the  paste  emerald  ring  with 
which  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu  grace- 
fully acknowledged  the  valuable  services  of 
his  man-of-war. 

"  Lady  Mary's  avarice  seems  to  have  been 
generally  credited  at  the  time,  though  we  have 
no  proofs  of  it,"  says  one  of  her  recent  biogra- 
phers, who  is  disposed,  and  rightly,  to  put 
scant  faith  in  Walpole's  malicious  jibes.  But 
if  the  story  of  the  ring  be  a  true  one,  she  can 
hardly  be  acquitted  of  amazing  thrift,  and  of 
a  still  more  amazing  assurance.  It  is  said  that 
the  gallant  commodore,  never  doubting  the 
worth  of  her  token,  was  wont  to  show  it  with 
some  ostentation  to  his  friends,  until  one  of 
them,  who  knew  the  lady  well,  stoutly  main- 
tained that  if  the  stone  were  genuine  she  would 
never  have  parted  with  it,  and  a  closer  inspec- 
tion proved  the  melancholy  accuracy  of  his 
suspicions.  As  for  much  of  her  so-called 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY.  179 

greed,  it  was  not  without  solid  justification. 
If  she  drove  a  hard  bargain  with  Mr.  Wortley, 
stipulating  most  unromantically  for  her  mar- 
riage settlement  before  she  ran  away  with  him, 
be  it  remembered  that  upon  this  auspicious 
occasion  she  was  compelled  to  act  as  her  own 
guardian  ;  and  if  she  had  an  inexplicable  fancy 
for  wearing  her  old  clothes,  the  dimity  petti- 
coat, and  the  gray  stockings,  and  the  faded 
green  brocade  riding-jacket  which  so  deeply 
offended  Walpole's  fastidious  eyes,  let  us  deal 
charitably  with  a  fault  in  which  she  has  but 
few  feminine  successors.  Those  were  times 
when  fashions  had  not  yet  learned  to  change 
with  such  chameleon-like  speed,  and  people  did 
occasionally  wear  their  old  clothes  with  an  un- 
blushing effrontery  that  would  be  well-nigh 
disgraceful  to-day.  Silks  and  satins,  laces  and 
furbelows,  were  all  of  the  costliest  description, 
and  their  owners  were  chary  of  discarding 
them,  or  even  of  lightly  exposing  them  to  ruin/) 
Emile  Souvestre's  languid  lady,  who  proves" ; 
the  purity  of  her  blood,  somewhat  after  the 
manner  of  the  princess  and  the  rose  leaf,  by 
supercilious  indifference  to  the  fate  of  her  vel- 
vet mantle  in  a  snowstorm,  could  hardly  have 


180  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

existed  a  few  hundred  years  ago.  We  have  in 
Pepys's  diary  a  most  amusing  record  of  his  dis- 
gust at  being  over-persuaded  by  his  wife  to 
wear  his  best  suit  on  a  certain  threatening  May 
Day,  and  how  of  course  it  rained,  and  all  their 
pleasure  was  spoiled.  The  guilty  Eve  was 
quite  as  unfortunate  as  her  husband,  for  she 
too  had  gone  forth  "  extraordinary  fine  in  her 
flowered  tabby  gown,"  which  we  are  greatly 
relieved  to  learn  a  little  later  was  two  years 
old,  but  smartly  renovated  with  brand-new 
lacings.  Only  fancy  being  so  careful  of  a 
two-year  gown  as  to  begrudge  it  to  the  sight 
of  court  and  commoners  on  May  Day ! 

The  same  frugal  spirit  extended  down  to  the 
last  century,  and  was  of  infinite  value  to  the 
self-respecting  poor.  Artisans  had  not  yet 
found  it  imperative  to  dress  their  wives  and 
children  in  imitation  finery,  and  farmers  were 
even  less  awake  to  the  exigencies  of  fashion- 
able attire.  We  read  of  rural  couples  placidly 
wearing  their  wedding  clothes  into  their  ad- 
vanced old  age,  and  we  are  lost  in  hopeless 
speculation  as  to  how  they  accommodated  their 
spreading  proportions  to  the  coats  and  gowns 
which  presumably  had  fitted  the  comparative 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY.  181 

slimness  of  their  youth.  With  what  patient 
ingenuity  did  the  good  dames  of  Miss  Mitford's 
village,  aided  occasionally  by  an  itinerant  tai- 
loress,  turn  and  return  their  husbands'  cast-off 
clothing,  until,  from  seeming  ruin,  they  had 
evolved  sound  garments  for  their  growing  boys ; 
and  with  what  pardonable  pride  did  the  strut- 
ting youngsters  exhibit  on  the  village  streets 
these  baggy  specimens  of  their  mothers'  skill ! 
Among  the  innumerable  anecdotes  told  of 
George  III.,  it  is  said  that,  strolling  once  with 
Queen  Charlotte  in  the  woods  of  Windsor,  he 
met  a  little  red-cheeked,  white-haired  lad,  who 
proved,  on  examination,  to  be  the  son  of  one  of 
his  majesty's  beef-eaters.  The  gracious  king, 
always  well  pleased  with  children,  patted  the 
boy's  flaxen  head,  and  bade  him  kneel  and  kiss 
the  queen's  hand,  but  this  the  sturdy  young 
Briton  declined  flatly  to  do  ;  not,  be  it  said,  from 
any  desire  to  emulate  the  examples  of  Penn  and 
Franklin,  by  illustrating  on  a  minor  scale  the 
heroic  principles  of  democracy,  but  solely  and 
entirely  that  he  might  not  spoil  his  new 
breeches  by  contact  with  the  grass.  So  thrifty 
a  monarch,  says  Thackeray,  should  have  hugged 
on  the  spot  a  child  after  his  own  heart ;  and 


182  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

even  if  the  royal  favor  failed  to  manifest  itself 
in  precisely  this  fashion,  I  make  no  doubt  that 
the  beef-eater's  wife,  who  had  stitched  those 
little  breeches  with  motherly  solicitude,  found 
ample  comfort  in  such  a  judicious  son. 

Perhaps,  indeed,  he  was  a  worthy  scion  of 
the  race  of  Dodsons,  with  whom  it  was  an 
honorable  tradition  to  preserve  their  best 
clothes,  very  much  as  the  inhabitants  of  Ceylon 
preserved  their  sacred  Bo-trees,  by  guarding 
them  jealously  from  the  desecrating  touch  of 
man.  Who  that  has  ever  had  the  happiness 
of  reading  "  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  "  can  for- 
get the  dim  seclusion  of  the  shrouded  room, 
where,  far  from  the  madding  crowd,  reposes  in 
dignified  seclusion  Mrs.  Pullet's*  new  bonnet  ? 
To  go  to  see  it  is  in  itself  a  pilgrimage  ;  to  try 
it  on,  a  solemn  ceremonial ;  what,  then,  must 
have  been  the  profound  emotions  with  which 
it  was  actually  worn !  Little  Maggie  Tulli- 
ver,  watching  with  breathless  interest  while  it 
is  lifted  reverently  from  the  shrine,  feels  op- 
pressed with  a  sense  of  mystery,  and  is  childish- 
ly indignant  because  no  one  will  tell  her  what  it 
means.  The  Dodsons  are  all  fond  of  fine  rai- 
ment, but  not  for  the  mere  vulgar  pleasure  of 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY.  183 

self-adornment.  Less  favored  families  may  take 
a  coarse  delight  in  exhibiting  their  clothes,  but 
it  remains  for  them  to  derive  a  higher  grati- 
fication from  keeping  them  unseen.  Even  a 
third-best  front  is  felt  to  be  much  too  good  for 
a  sister's  dinner  party,  while  in  the  matter  of 
frocks  and  trimmings  they  are  as  adamant. 
"  Other  women,  if  they  liked,  might  have  their 
best  thread  lace  in  every  wash  ;  but  when  Mrs. 
Glegg  died,  it  would  be  found  that  she  had 
better  lace  laid  by  in  the  right-hand  drawer  of 
her  wardrobe  in  the  spotted  chamber,  than  ever 
Mrs.  Wooll  of  St.  Ogg's  had  bought  in  her  life, 
although  Mrs.  Wooll  wore  her  lace  before  it  was 
paid  for."  Here,  in  a  humble  way,  we  have 
the  same  sentiment  that  thrilled  the  heart  of 
Elizabeth  Petrovna,  when  she  gazed  at  the 
thousand  and  one  gowns  hanging  up  in  the 
royal  closets,  and  felt  a  true  womanly  satisfac- 
tion in  knowing  they  were  there. 

It  is  in  fact  a  curious  and  edifying  circum- 
stance that  the  great  ones  of  this  earth,  if  they 
must  be  held  responsible  for  much  of  its  un- 
warranted luxury,  have  at  the  same  time  af- 
forded us  many  shining  examples,  not  only  of 
that  general  and  indiscriminate  parsimony 


184  POINTS  OF  VIEW. 

which  induced  old  Frederic  William,  for  in- 
stance, to  feed  his  family  on  pork  and  cabbage, 
but  also  of  that  more  refined  and  esoteric 
species  of  economy  which  it  is  our  task  to  rec- 
ognize and  encourage.  George  III.  was  frugal 
in  all  things,  but  his  particular  saving  appears 
to  have  been  in  carpets,  for,  summer  or  winter, 
he  never  permitted  these  effeminate  devices 
upon  his  bedroom  floor.  His  great-grand- 
father, George  I.,  does  not  figure  as  an  austere 
or  self-denying  character ;  but  he,  too,  stinted 
bravely  in  one  direction,  —  the  family  wash. 
In  that  beloved  court  of  Hanover,  which  he 
exchanged  so  reluctantly  for  the  glories  of  St. 
James,  there  was  evidently  no  lack  of  well-fed, 
well-paid  attendants.  Looking  down  the  list, 
we  see  seventy  odd  postilions  and  stable-men, 
twenty  cooks  with  six  assistants,  seven  "  officers 
of  the  cellar,"  twenty-four  lackeys  in  livery, 
sixteen  trumpeters  and  fiddlers,  —  and  only 
two  washerwomen.  Think  of  it,  —  twenty-six 
people  to  cook,  and  only  two  to  wash  !  "  But 
one  half -penny  worth  of  bread  to  this  intoler- 
able deal  of  sack !  "  Yet  the  chances  are  that, 
of  all  the  officials  in  that  snug,  jolly,  dirty  little 
Hanoverian  court,  those  two  washerwomen 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY.  185 

alone  led  comparatively  idle  lives.  When 
balanced  with  the  arduous  labors  of  the  seven 
officers  of  the  cellar,  I  am  convinced  their 
position  was  a  sinecure. 

Of  much  the  same  temper  as  royal  George 
was  that  great  Earl  of  Northumberland, 
whose  expense-book,  which  may  be  consulted 
to-day,  gives  us  a  delightful  insight  into  some 
of  the  curious  methods  of  past  housekeeping. 
Germany,  be  it  confessed,  has  always  been 
a  trifle  backward  in  the  matter  of  cleanli- 
ness, but  England,  until  within  the  last  two 
centuries,  was  very  nearly  as  conservative. 
Appalling  stories  are  told  of  the  fine  ladies 
and  gentlemen  who  glittered  in  the  courts  of 
the  Tudors  and  Stuarts,  and  who,  in  their 
light-hearted  indifference  to  dirt,  very  nearly 
rivaled  the  prowess  of  the  Spanish  Isabella, 
when  she  vowed  away  her  clean  linen  until 
Ostend  should  fall,  and  gave  the  honor  of  her 
name  to  that  delicate  yellow  tint  which  her 
garments  assumed  in  the  interval.  The  Earl 
of  Northumberland,  however,  aspired  to  no 
such  uneasy  asceticism.  He  was  simply  the 
model  housekeeper  of  his  age.  Every  item  of 
expenditure  in  his  immense  establishment  was 


186  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

rigorously  defined,  and  no  less  rigorously  over- 
looked. With  his  own  noble  hands  he  wrote 
down  the  exact  proportion  of  food,  fuel,  and 
candles  which  each  body  of  retainers  was  ex- 
pected to  consume  ;  and  while  the  upper  ser- 
vants appear  to  have  fared  tolerably  well,  the 
commoner  sort  enjoyed  an  unbroken  monotony 
of  salt  meat,  black  bread,  and  beer.  But  it 
is  in  the  matter  of  tablecloths  that  his  grace 
chiefly  excelled,  and  that  he  merits  an  honor- 
able mention  in  the  ranks  of  esoteric  parsimony. 
For  his  own  needs,  and  for  the  service  and 
pleasure  of  his  many  guests,  —  and  let  us  re- 
member that  he  kept  open  house  after  the  hos- 
pitable fashion  of  his  day,  —  eight  of  these 
valuable  articles  were  deemed  amply  sufficient ; 
while  in  the  servants'  hall  one  cloth  a  month  was 
the  allowance.  Granted,  if  you  please,  that  in 
this  rather  effeminate  age  we  have  grown  un- 
duly fastidious  about  such  trivialities  ;  yet  who, 
looking  back  through  the  long  vista  of  years, 
can  contemplate  without  a  shudder  the  condi- 
tion of  that  tablecloth  when  its  month's  servi- 
tude was  over  ? 

It  is  easier,  however,  to  jeer  at  the  honorable 
efforts  of  mankind  than  to  arrange  our  own 


ESOTERIC  ECONOMY.  187 

economies  on  a  strictly  satisfactory  basis.  Be- 
yond a  rational  and  healthy  impulse  to  save 
on  others  rather  than  on  ourselves,  few  of  us 
can  boast  of  much  enlightenment  in  the  mat- 
ter, and  even  our  one  unerring  guide  is,  in  a 
measure,  neutralized  by  the  consistent  deter- 
mination of  others  to  exert  their  own  saving 
powers  on  us.  The  out-and-out  miser  is  at  best 
a  creature  of  little  penetration.  He  cheats 
himself  sorely  throughout  life,  and  gains  a  sort 
of  shabby  posthumous  distinction  only  when 
he  is  long  past  enjoying  it.  The  true  econo- 
mist is,  if  we  may  believe  Mrs.  Oliphant,  a  rara 
avis,  as  exceptional  in  his  way  as  the  true 
genius.  She  endeavors,  indeed,  with  much 
humility,  to  describe  for  us  such  a  character 
in  "  The  Curate  in  Charge  ;  "  but,  while  laying 
all  possible  stress  on  Mrs.  St.  John's  extraor- 
dinary proficiency,  she  does  not  for  a  moment 
venture  to  hint  at  the  secret  of  her  power.  "  I 
don't  pretend  to  know  how  she  did  it,"  con- 
fesses this  discriminating  authoress,  "  any  more 
than  I  can  tell  you  how  Shakespeare  wrote 
'  Hamlet.'  It  was  quite  easy  to  him  and  to 
her,  but  if  one  knew  how,  one  would  be  as  great 
a  poet  as  he  was,  as  great  an  economist  as  she." 


188  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

This  is  a  degree  of  perfection  to  which  we  may 
not  well  aspire.  Shakespeare  and  Mrs.  St. 
John  lie  equally  beyond  our  humble  imitation. 
We  do  not  even  feel  ambitious  of  such  excel- 
lence, but  cherish  the  more  contentedly  those 
few  finely  selected  frugalities,  those  car-fares 
and  match-stumps,  those  postage  stamps  and 
half  sheets  of  paper,  those  dimly-lighted  rooms 
and  evaded  custom-house  duties,  which,  while 
they  may  not  leave  us  much  richer  at  the  year's 
end,  have  yet  a  distinct  ethical  value  of  their 
own,  and,  breathing  an  indescribable  air  of 
conscious  rectitude,  serve  to  keep  us  in  har- 
mony with  ourselves. 


SCANDERBEG. 

CLIO  is  the  most  shamelessly  unreliable  of 
the  Muses.  She  selects  her  favorites  with  the 
autocratic  partiality  of  the  Russian  Catherine, 
decorates  them  with  questionable  honors,  en- 
riches them  with  other  people's  spoils,  admires 
them  to  her  heart's  content,  and  thrusts  them 
serenely  to  the  front  to  receive  the  approbation 
of  the  world.  Occasionally  she  wearies  of  one 
or  the  other,  and  flings  him  lightly  down  from 
the  pedestal  he  has  adorned  so  bravely.  Oc- 
casionally, having  a  fine  feminine  sense  of 
humor,  she  is  pleased  to  play  with  our  credu- 
lity, and,  dressing  up  a  man  of  straw,  she 
assures  us  smilingly  that  he  is  real  flesh  and 
blood,  and  worthy  of  our  sincerest  admiration. 
And  all  this  while,  her  best  and  noblest  meet 
with  stiffly  measured  praise,  and  her  strong 
sons  are  passed  indifferently  by.  It  is  at  least 
amusing  to  think  of  the  relative  positions  occu- 
pied by  the  true  mountaineer  Scanderbeg,  and 
the  mythical  mountaineer  William  Tell.  The 


or  THB 
TJNTVTVRfiTT 


190  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

one  sleeps  unremembered  with  scanty,  hard- 
won  fame  ;  the  other  carries  such  a  weight  of 
laurels  that  poets,  wearied  with  singing  his 
praises,  have  been  driven  in  despair  to  sing  the 
praises  of  those  who  praise  him,  as  Coleridge 
piped  to  the  Duchess  of  Devonshire,  — 

"Splendor's  fondly   fostered  child," 

because,  in  a  moment  of  mild  enthusiasm,  she 
addressed  some  well-meant  but  highly  inefficient 
verses  to  the  platform  from  which  Tell  did  not 
shoot  the  tyrant  Gessler. 

If 'the  heroic  struggle  for  a  national  life  is 
at  all  times  the  most  engrossing  picture  the 
world's  history  has  to  show  us,  where  shall  we 
look  for  a  more  vivid  illustration  of  the  theme 
than  in  the  long  and  bitter  contest  between 
cross  and  crescent,  between  the  steady,  relent- 
less encroachment  of  the  Turkoman  power,  and 
the  vain  and  dauntless  courage  which  opposed 
it  ?  The  story  of  the  early  Ottomans  is  one  of 
wasteful  and  inexorable  conquest,  unrelieved 
by  any  touches  of  humanity,  or  any  impulses 
towards  a  higher  civilization.  To  the  ferocious 
and  impetuous  pride  of  the  barbarian  they 
added  an  almost  inconceivable  wariness  and 


SCANDERBKG.  191 

patience ;  they  knew  when  to  wait  and  when 
to  strike ;  they  were  never  unduly  elated  by 
victory,  and  never  demoralized  by  defeat. 
That  strange  dream  of  their  founder  Othman 
which  won  for  him  his  Cilician  wife,  the  mys- 
terious vision  of  the  full  moon  resting  in  his 
bosom,  and  of  the  stately  tree  that  sprang 
therefrom,  must  have  dirnly  hinted  to  the  sav- 
age chief  of  the  glory  that  was  to  be.  When 
in  his  sleep  he  placed  Constantinople  as  a 
jewel  upon  his  swarthy  finger,  he  felt  the 
coming  of  shrouded  things,  and,  believing  the 
prophecy  would  be  fulfilled  in  his  descendant, 
he  saluted  his  bride  as  the  mother  of  a  mighty 
race  of  kings.  It  was  this  firm  conviction  of 
future  greatness  which  made  him  seek  for  his 
son  Orchan  a  fairer  and  nobler  wife  than 
could  be  found  in  the  black  tents  of  his  fol- 
lowers ;  and,  true  to  the  instincts  of  his  race, 
he  despoiled  an  enemy  to  enrich  his  own  hearth. 
A  Greek  captain,  in  command  of  the  castle  of 
Belecoma,  was  betrothed  to  the  beautiful 
daughter  of  a  neighboring  Christian  chief. 
On  their  marriage  night  Othman  surprised 
the  wedding  party  as  they  rode  through  the 
dark  mountain  passes.  The  short  and  desper- 


192  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

ate  conflict  which  ensued  could  have  but  one 
bitter  ending.  "  The  bridegroom  was  slain, 
and  his  Greek  bride,  the  Lotus-flower  of  Brusa, 
was  swept  off  by  the  Turkoman  robbers  to 
their  lair,  to  become  the  spouse  of  their  leader's 
son. "  i 

Orchan  was  a  mere  boy  when  he  received  this 
ravished  prize,  the  fair  booty  of  a  barbarous 
strife.  Fifty  years  later,  when  hair  and  beard 
were  white  with  age,  he  married  again ;  and 
this  time  his  bride  was  the  daughter  of  a  Chris- 
tian emperor,  not  stolen  away  from  friends  and 
kindred,  but  given  to  him  publicly  with  superb 
ceremonies,  and  a  ghastly  mockery  of  rejoicing. 
In  fifty  years  the  Ottoman  power  had  grown 
into  such  fierce  and  sinister  lustihood  that 
Theodora,  daughter  of  the  Emperor  Cantacu- 
zene,  was  assigned  as  a  precious  hostage  and 
seal  of  friendship  between  her  father  and  his 
dreaded  Turkish  ally.  The  church  refused 
her  blessing  to  this  unholy  sacrifice,  and,  amid 
the  pomp  and  majesty  of  imperial  nuptials, 
there  was  lacking  even  the  outward  form  of 
Christian  marriage.  From  that  date  the  tide 
of  Turkish  conquest  spread  with  devastating 
1  The  Early  Ottomans,  by  Dean  Church. 


SCANDERBEG.  193 

rapidity.  The  impetuous  encroachments  of 
Orchan,  the  steady  and  irresistible  advances 
of  Anmrath,  became  under  Bajazet  a  struggle 
for  life  and  death,  not  with  the  enfeebled 
powers  of  Greece,  but  with  a  rival  conqueror 
who  had  swept  from  the  broad  Tartar  steppes 
to  subdue  and  lay  waste  the  Eastern  world. 
Eight  dynasties  had  already  been  destroyed, 
eight  crowned  heads  had  been  laid  low,  when 
Tim  our,  grimly  ready  for  a  ninth  victim,  en- 
countered the  hitherto  invincible  sultan.  They 
met,  and  Bajazet,  who  had  seen  the  flower  of 
French  and  German  chivalry  perish  at  his  com- 
mand, who  had  sat  at  his  tent-door  to  witness 
the  day-long  massacre  of  Christian  prisoners, 
and  who  had  shadowed  the  very  walls  of  Con- 
stantinople, —  Bajazet  was  crushed  like  a  worm 
by  the  lame,  white-haired  old  Tartar,  and,  eat- 
ing out  his  heart  with  dull  fury,  died  in  shame- 
ful captivity.  But  his  race  survived,  vigorous, 
elastic,  defiant,  and  renewed  its  strength  with 
amazing  swiftness  under  Mahommed  the  Re- 
storer and  Amurath  the  Second,  whose  reign 
was  one  long  conflict  with  the  Greek  Emperor 
Manuel,  with  Sigismund  of  Hungary,  and, 
hardest  of  all  to  subdue,  with  those  warlike 


194  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

Sclavonic  tribes  who,  often  defeated  but  never 
conquered,  maintained  with  superb  courage  the 
freedom  of  their  mountain  fastnesses.  It  was 
an  unknown  Servian  soldier  who  slew  Amurath 
the  First  in  the  very  moment  of  his  triumph  ; 
it  was  the  Albanian  chief  Scanderbeg  who  re- 
pulsed Amurath  the  Second,  and  hurled  him 
back  to  die,  shamed  and  heart-broken,  at 
Adrianople. 

Pride  of  race,  love  for  his  native  land,  shame 
at  prolonged  captivity,  and  fury  at  heaped-up 
wrongs,  — all  these  conflicting  passions  united 
themselves  in  the  breast  of  this  implacable 
warrior,  and  urged  him  relentlessly  along  his 
appointed  path.  He  was  the  outcome  of  that 
ruthless  policy  by  which  the  Turks  turned  the 
children  of  the  cross  into  defenders  of  the  cres- 
cent, a  policy  pursued  with  almost  undeviating 
success  since  Black  Halil,  a  century  and  a  half 
before,  had  urged  the  training  of  Christian 
boys  into  a  school  of  Moslem  soldiers.  What 
gives  to  the  history  of  Scanderbeg  its  peculiar 
significance,  and  its  peculiar  ethical  and  artistic 
value  is  the  fact  that  he  avenged,  not  only  his 
own  injuries,  but  the  injuries  of  countless  chil- 
dren who,  for  over  a  hundred  and  fifty  years, 


SCANDERBEG.  195 

had  been  snatched  from  their  homes,  families, 
and  faith  to  swell  the  ranks  of  an  infidel  foe. 
Wherever  the  tide  of  Ottoman  battle  raged 
most  fiercely,  there,  savage,  dark,  invincible, 
stood  the  Janissaries,  men  suckled  on  Christian 
breasts  and  signed  with  Christian  baptism, 
now  flinging  away  their  lives  for  an  alien  cause 
and  an  alien  creed,  fighting  with  the  irresistible 
courage  of  fanaticism  against  their  birthright 
and  their  kindred.  Never  before  or  since,  in 
the  history  of  all  the  nations,  has  a  system  of 
proselytizing  been  attended  with  such  tremen- 
dous results.  The  life-blood  of  Christendom 
was  drained  to  supply  fresh  triumphs  for  its 
enemies,  and  the  rigorous  discipline  of  a  mo- 
nastic training  moulded  these  innocent  young 
captives  into  a  soldiery  whose  every  thought 
and  every  action  was  subordinate  to  one  over- 
powering influence,  an  austere,  unquestioning 
obedience  to  the  cause  of  Islam. 

With  the  example  of  this  extraordinary  suc- 
cess always  before  their  eyes,  it  is  little  wonder 
that  the  Turks  regarded  the  children  of  the 
vanquished  as  so  many  docile  instruments  to 
be  fashioned  by  rigid  tutelage  into  faithful 
followers  of  the  Prophet,  and  the  first  step 


196  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

towards  this  desired  goal  lay  in  their  early  adop- 
tion of  the  Mohammedan  faith.  No  pang  of 
pity,  no  sentiment  of  honor,  interfered  with  this 
relentless  purpose.  When  John  Castriota,  the 
hereditary  lord  of  Croia,  yielded  up  his  four 
sons  as  hostages  to  Amurath  the  Second,  he 
relied  on  the  abundant  promises  made  him  by 
that  sovereign,  who  had,  on  the  whole,  a  fair 
reputation  for  keeping  his  royal  word.  The 
lads  were  carried  to  Adrianople  and  reared  in 
the  sultan's  palace,  where  one  at  least  of  the 
little  prisoners  attracted  dangerous  notice  by 
his  vivacity  and  grace,  —  inheritances,  it  is 
said,  from  his  beautiful  mother,  Voisava.  The 
fair-haired  boy,  then  only  eight  years  old,  be- 
came first  the  plaything  of  the  seraglio,  and 
afterwards  the  jealously  guarded  favorite  of 
Amurath  himself.  He  was  carefully  taught, 
and  was  forced  to  conform  to  the  ceremonial 
rites  of  the  Ottomans,  and  to  make  an  open 
profession  of  his  new  creed,  receiving  on  this 
occasion  the  name  of  Scanderbeg,  a  name  des- 
tined to  carry  with  it  a  just  retribution  in  the 
universal  terror  it  excited.  How  much  of 
Christian  belief  still  lingered  in  the  child's 
soul,  or  how  much  he  gained  afterwards  from 


SCANDERBEG.  197 

the  Albanian  soldiers  who  had  access  to  him, 
it  is  impossible  to  say.  Young  as  he  was,  he 
had  learned,  amid  the  unutterable  treachery 
and  corruption  of  an  Eastern  court,  to  hide 
his  emotions  under  an  impenetrable  mask,  so 
that  even  Amurath,  cruel,  wily,  and  suspicious, 
found  himself  baffled  by  this  Greek  boy,  whose 
handsome  face  betrayed  to  none  the  impetuous 
anger  that  consumed  him.  At  nineteen  he 
had  command  of  five  thousand  horsemen,  and 
enjoyed  the  title  of  pasha,  a  barren  honor  for 
one  soon  to  be  robbed  of  his  birthright.  After 
the  close  of  the  Hungarian  war  John  Castriota 
died,  and  Amurath,  ignoring  his  plighted 
faith,  seized  Croia  in  the  name  of  the  captive 
princes,  ruthlessly  extinguished  its  civil  and 
religious  liberties,  turned  the  churches  into 
mosques,  and  treated  the  whole  country  as  a 
defeated  and  dependent  province.  Scander- 
beg's  three  brothers  were  conveniently  re- 
moved by  poison ;  he  himself,  the  object  of  a 
curious  affection  on  the  sultan's  part,  was 
watched  with  jealous  and  exacting  eyes,  and 
for  a  while  it  seemed  as  though  the  free-born 
mountain  chief  would  add  one  more  to  the 
long  list  of  Turkish  proselytes  and  favorites, 


198  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

silenced  with  doubtful  titles,  bought  with  dis- 
honorable wealth. 

But  it  was  a  time  of  waiting,  a  time  ominous 
with  delay.  The  heir  of  Croia,  mute,  patient, 
and  resolved,  bided  with  steady  self-control  the 
hour  when  he  could  strike  a  single  blow  for 
faith  and  freedom.  It  came  with  the  breaking 
out  of  fresh  Hungarian  troubles  :  with  the  de- 
fiance sent  by  John  Hunyadi  and  his  forces 
drawn  up  on  the  banks  of  the  Moravia. 
While  the  .Ottoman  armies  were  engaged  in 
this  most  disastrous  conflict,  Scanderbeg  threw 
off  his  long-endured  disguise,  possessed  himself 
by  an  unscrupulous  device  of  his  native  city, 
and  put  all  who  opposed  him  to  the  sword. 
From  that  day  until  his  death,  forty  years 
later,  the  record  of  his  life  is  one  perpetual 
heroic  struggle  to  preserve  the  hard- won  liberty 
of  Epeiros,  a  struggle  without  intermission  or 
relief,  without  rest  for  the  victor  or  pity  for 
the  vanquished.  His  scornful  indifference  to 
pressing  dangers  was  in  itself  the  best  of  tonics 
to  a  people  naturally  brave,  but  taught  by 
bitter  experience  to  fear  the  inexorable  Turkish 
yoke.  Scanderbeg  feared  nothing  ;  with  him, 
indeed,  fear  was  swallowed  up  in  hatred.  He 


SCANDERBEG.  199 

understood  perfectly  the  nature  of  the  warfare 
in  which  he  was  engaged ;  he  knew  that,  with 
adroitness  and  vigilance,  every  dark  pass  and 
every  rocky  crag  became  his  friend  and  ally. 
He  knew,  too,  the  slender  resources  of  the 
country,  and  never  committed  the  mistake  of 
taking  more  men  into  the  field  than  he  could 
manage  and  support.  When  Amurath  sent 
an  army  of  forty  thousand  soldiers  to  punish 
Croia,  and  bring  back  the  rebel  chief  "  alive 
or  dead "  to  Adrianople,  Scande^beg  limited 
his  own  forces  to  seven  thousand  foot  and  eight 
thousand  horse,  when  he  might,  had  he  chosen, 
have  trebled  that  number.  With  this  compact 
body  of  picked  and  hardy  warriors  he  lay  in 
wait  for  the  enemy,  entrapped  them  by  a  feigned 
retreat  into  a  narrow  defile,  and,  hemming 
them  in  on  either  side,  filled  up  the  valley  with 
their  slain.  Over  twenty  thousand  Turks 
perished  in  that  dreadful  snare,  many  of  them 
being  trampled  down  by  their  helpless  and 
panic-stricken  countrymen.  It  was  Scander- 
beg's  first  decisive  victory,  and  a  grim  warning 
to  Amurath  of  the  possibilities  that  awaited 
him  in  the  future.  It  gave  to  Croia  a  breath- 
ing spell,  and  to  its  victorious  army  the  rich 


200  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

spoils  of  an  Ottoman  camp,  so  that  those  who 
had  gone  forth  meagrely  on  foot  returned  well 
armed  and  bravely  mounted  to  their  rock-built 
citadel. 

Had  this  sudden  and  bewildering  success 
been  followed  up  by  a  vigorous  aggressive 
warfare  on  the  part  of  Servia,  Hungary,  and 
Poland,  then  all  in  arms  against  their  common 
foe ;  had  the  allied  powers  listened  to  the  moun- 
tain chiefs,  or  to  the  burning  remonstrances 
of  Cardinal*  Julian,  the  pope's  legate,  the 
Turks  might  have  been  driven  forcibly  back 
from  Europe,  and  long  centuries  of  suffering 
and  dishonor  spared  to  Christendom.  But  the 
lord  of  Servia,  George  Brankovich,  yearned  for 
his  children  whom  Amurath  held  as  hostages  ; 
Ladislaw,  king  of  Hungary  and  Poland,  was 
weary  of  the  perpetual  strife  ;  even  Hunyadi's 
fiery  voice  was  silenced  ;  and  a  treaty  of  peace 
was  signed  with  an  enemy  who  might  then,  and 
then  only,  have  been  crushed.  This  treaty, 
shameful  in  itself,  was  still  more  shamefully 
broken  in  the  following  year,  when  the  Chris- 
tian hosts  again  took  the  field,  only  to  be 
utterly  routed  in  the  terrible  battle  of  St. 
Martin's  Eve.  Never  was  disaster  more  com- 


SCANDERBEG.  201 

plete :  Ladislaw's  severed  head,  borne  on  a  pike 
over  the  Ottoman  ranks,  struck  terror  and  de- 
spair into  the  hearts  of  his  followers  ;  Hunya- 
di,  after  a  vain,  furious  effort  to  redeem  this 
ghastly  symbol  of  defeat,  fled  from  a  field  red 
with  his  countrymen's  blood  ;  the  papal  legate 
and  two  Hungarian  bishops  perished  in  the 
thickest  of  the  fray.  It  was  the  beginning 
of  the  end,  and  four  years  later  the  cause  of 
Christendom  received  its  deathblow  at  Kos- 
sova,  when  Hunyadi,  beaten  finally  back  from 
Servia,  was  taught  by  the  bitterness  of  defeat 
that  his  name  no  longer  sounded  ominously, 
as  of  old,  in  the  ears  of  his  Moslem  foe.  Only 
Scanderbeg  remained  unsubdued  amid  his 
mountain  peaks,  and  Amurath,  flushed  with 
conquest,  now  turned  his  whole  attention  to 
the  final  punishment  of  this  audacious  rebel. 

The  scale  on  which  the  invasion  of  Croia 
was  planned  shows  in  itself  how  deep-seated 
was  the  sultan's  anger,  and  how  relentless  his 
purpose.  One  hundred  and  sixty  thousand 
men  were  assembled  in  Adrianople,  the  ablest 
generals  were  united  in  command,  and  Mo- 
hammed, his  savage  son  and  successor,  accom- 
panied the  expedition,  filled  with  fierce  hopes 


202  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

of  vengeance.  Resistance  seemed  almost  vain, 
but  Scanderbeg,  in  no  way  disturbed  by  the 
coming  storm,  prepared  with  characteristic 
coolness  to  meet  it  at  every  point.  He  ordered 
all  who  dwelt  in7 the  open  country  or  in  unpro- 
tected villages  to  destroy  their  harvests  and  to 
quit  their  homes,  so  that  the  enemy  might  find 
no  resources  in  the  scorched  and  deserted  fields. 
The  women  and  children,  the  aged  and  infirm, 
were  sent  either  to  the  sea-coast  or  out  of  the 
kingdom,  many  of  them  as  far  away  as  Venice. 
The  fortifications  of  Croia  were  repaired ; 
the  garrison  was  strengthened  and  put  under 
command  of  a  brave  and  able  governor,  and 
Scanderbeg  himself,  with  only  ten  thousand 
men,  took  the  field,  ready  to  waylay  and  harass 
Amurath  at  every  step  of  his  difficult  and  dan- 
gerous march.  The  first  severe  fighting  was 
done  before  the  walls  of  Setigrade,  a  strongly 
guarded  town  which  made  a  gallant  resistance, 
repulsing  the  Turks  again  and  again,  and  only 
yielding  when  a  traitor,  bought  by  the  sultan's 
gold,  poisoned  the  fountains  which  supplied 
the  city  with  water.  From  this  point  the  in- 
vading army  marched  on  to  Croia,  covered  the 
surrounding  plains,  planted  their  cannon  — 


SCANDERBEG.  203 

then  an  imposing  novelty  in  warfare  —  before 
its  massive  gates,  and  summoned  the  garrison 
to  surrender.  A  defiant  refusal  was  returned  ; 
the  Ottomans  stormed  the  walls,  and  were  re- 
pulsed with  such  fury  that  over  eight  thousand 
Janissaries  perished  in  the  combat,  while 
Scanderbeg,  poised  like  an  eagle  on  the  cliffs, 
wa'ted  until  the  battle  was  at  its  height,  and 
then  sweeping  down  on  the  unconscious  foe, 
forced  their  trenches,  fired  the  camp,  and  drove 
all  before  him  with  terrible  havoc  and  slaugh- 
ter. By  the  time  Mohammed  could  rally  his 
scattered  forces,  the  Epeirots  were  off  and 
away,  with  little  scathe  or  damage  to  them- 
selves ;  and  this  exasperating  method  of  attack 
was  the  weapon  with  which  the  mountain  chief 
finally  wore  out  the  courage  and  endurance 
of  the  invaders.  Every  inch  of  ground  was 
familiar  to  him,  and  a  snare  to  his  enemies. 
Did  Mohammed,  burning  with  rage,  scale  the 
hills  in  pursuit,  a  handful  of  men  held  him  at 
bay ;  while  Scanderbeg,  appearing  as  if  by 
magic  on  the  other  side  of  the  camp,  chose  this 
propitious  moment  for  an  attack.  By  day  or 
night  he  gave  the  enemy  no  truce,  no  respite, 
no  quarter.  Two  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four 


204  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

he  slept,  and  all  the  rest  he  spent  in  unceas 
ing,  unwearying,  unpitying  warfare ;  until  the 
Turks,  harassed  by  a  danger  ever  present  but 
never  visible,  lost  heart  and  trembled  before 
the  breathless  energy  of  their  foe.  They  were 
beginning  also  to  suffer  from  a  scarcity  of  pro- 
visions, and  Scanderbeg  took  excellent  care 
that  this  trouble  should  not  be  too  speedily  re- 
lieved. The  supplies,  brought  at  an  immense 
cost  from  Desia,  were  intercepted  and  carried 
off  triumphantly  to  the  hills,  and  the  unhappy 
Ottomans,  starved  in  camp  and  slaughtered 
out  of  it,  realized  with  ever-increasing  dismay 
the  unenviable  nature  of  their  position. 

It  must  be  admitted,  in  justice  to  the 
Epeirots,  that  the  success  of  Scanderbeg's  ma- 
noeuvres rested  exclusively  on  their  absolute 
and  unquestioned  fidelity.  Swift  and  sure  in- 
formation was  brought  him  of  every  movement 
on  the  enemy's  part,  and  vigilant  eyes  kept 
watch  over  every  rocky  pass  that  gave  access 
to  his  haunts.  For  once  Amurath's  gold  was 
powerless  to  buy  a  single  traitor,  and  the  syste- 
matic perfidy  by  which  the  Turks  were  accus- 
tomed to  steal  what  they  could  not  grasp  failed 
for  once  of  its  prey.  After  a  fruitless  effort 


SCANDERBEG.  205 

to  undermine  the  rock  on  which  Croia  was 
founded,  the  sultan  sought  to  corrupt  first  the 
governor  and  then  the  garrison  with  dazzling 
offers  of  advancement,  but  all  the  wealth  in 
Adrianople  could  not  purchase  one  poor  Chris- 
tian soldier.  Baffled  and  heart-sick  with  re- 
peated failure,  Amurath  at  last  offered  to  raise 
the  siege  and  depart,  on  payment  of  a  small 
yearly  sum,  a  mere  nominal  tribute  to  salve 
his  wounded  pride.  Even  this  trifling  conces- 
sion was  sternly  refused  by  Scanderbeg,  who 
would  yield  nothing  to  his  hated  foe.  Then 
for  the  first  time  the  sultan  understood  the 
relentless  nature  of  this  man  whom  he  had 
petted  as  a  child  and  wronged  as  a  boy,  whom 
he  had  held  a  helpless  hostage  in  his  hands, 
and  who  now  defied  him  with  unutterable  aver- 
sion and  scorn.  Abandoning  himself  to  grief, 
fury,  and  despair,  he  tore  his  white  beard,  and 
recalled  his  countless  triumphs  in  the  past, 
only  to  compare  them  with  this  shameful  over- 
throw. He  who  had  seen  the  allied  powers  of 
Christendom  suing  at  his  feet,  to  be  humbled 
in  his  old  age  by  an  insignificant  Illyrian 
chieftain !  The  blow  broke  his  proud  heart, 
and  on  his  death-bed  he  conjured  his  son  to 


206  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

avenge  his  name  and  'honor.  Gladly  Moham- 
med undertook  the  task,  but  the  present  was 
no  time  for  its  fulfillment.  The  siege  of  Croia 
was  raised,  the  dejected  Moslem  army  strag- 
gled homewards,  cruelly  harassed  at  every 
step  by  their  unwearied  foe,  and  Scanderbeg 
once  more  entered  his  native  city  amid  the 
acclamations  of  a  brave  people,  born  again 
to  freedom,  and  wild  to  welcome  their  de- 
liverer. 

It  is  pleasant  to  think  that,  before  being 
called  a  third  time  into  the  field,  even  this  in- 
domitable fighter  found  a  little  leisure  in  which 
to  marry  a  wife,  and  to  cultivate  the  arts  of 
peace.  Domestic  tranquillity  ran  but  a  slender 
chance  of  palling  on  its  possessor  in  those  stir- 
ring days ;  but  Scanderbeg  made  the  most  of 
his  limited  opportunities.  He  carried  his 
bride  in  triumph  to  every  corner  of  his  little 
kingdom,  he  labored  hard  to  restore  those 
habits  of  thrift  and  industry  which  perpetual 
warfare  roots  out  of  every  nation,  and  he 
wisely  refrained  from  overtaxing  the  narrow 
resources  of  his  people.  When  his  purse  was 
empty,  he  looked  to  his  enemies  and  not  to  his 
friends  for  its  replenishment;  and  that  stout 


SCANDERBEG.  207 

old  adage,  "  The  Turk's  dominions  are  Scan- 
derbeg's  revenues,"  is  a  sufficient  witness  to 
his  admirable  financiering.  He  realized  fully 
that  the  legacy  of  hate  bequeathed  by  Amurath 
to  Mohammed  would  bear  bitter  fruits  in  the 
hands  of  that  fierce  and  able  monarch,  and  so 
employed  every  interval  of  peace  in  strength- 
ening himself  for  the  struggle  that  was  to  fol- 
low. Twice  again  during  his  lifetime  was 
Epeiros  invaded  by  the  Ottomans  ;  and  Scan- 
derbeg,  driven  from  his  lair,  was  hunted  like  a 
deer  from  hill  to  hill,  now  lying  in  covert,  now 
fiercely  resisting,  but  unconquered  always. 
Wily  offers  of  friendship  from  the  sultan  were 
received  with  a  not  unnatural  suspicion,  and 
courteously  declined ;  hired  assassins  were  de- 
tected, and  delivered  up  to  a  prompt  and  piti- 
less justice.  For  forty  years  this  Albanian 
soldier  defended  his  mountain  eyrie  from  a 
power  vast  enough  to  destroy  two  empires, 
and  cruel  enough  to  make  the  whole  Eastern 
world  tremble.  Constantinople  fell,  while 
Croia  stood  unharmed.  The  last  news  brought 
to  Scanderbeg,  as  he  lay  dying  at  Lyssa,  was 
that  the  Turks  had  invaded  the  Venetian  do- 
minions. The  feeble  warrior  raised  himself  in 


208  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

bed,  and  called  for  his  sword  and  armor.  "  Tell 
them,"  he  gasped,  "  that  I  will  be  with  them 
to-morrow,"  and  fell  back  fainting  on  his  pil- 
lows. On  the  morrow  he  was  dead. 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION. 

SANDWICHES,  oranges,  and  penny  novelettes 
are  the  three  great  requisites  for  English  trav- 
eling, —  for  third-class  traveling,  at  least ;  and, 
of  the  three,  the  novelette  is  by  far  the  most 
imperative,  a  pleasant  proof  of  how  our  intel- 
lectual needs  outstrip  our  bodily  requirements. 
The  clerks  and  artisans,  shopgirls,  dressmak- 
ers, and  milliners,  who  pour  into  London  every 
morning  by  the  early  trains,  have,  each  and 
every  one,  a  choice  specimen  of  penny  fiction 
with  which  to  beguile  the  short  journey,  and 
perhaps  the  few  spare  minutes  of  a  busy  day. 
The  workingman  who  slouches  up  and  down 
the  platform,  waiting  for  the  moment  of  de- 
parture, is  absorbed  in  some  crumpled  bit  of 
pink-covered  romance.  The  girl  who  lounges 
opposite  to  us  in  the  carriage,  and  who  would 
be  a  very  pretty  girl  in  any  other  conceivable 
hat,  sucks  mysterious  sticky  lozenges,  and 
reads  a  story  called  "  Mariage  a  la  Mode,  or 
Getting  into  Society,"  which  she  subsequently 


210  POINTS   OF  VIEW. 

lends  to  me,  —  seeing,  I  think,  the  covetous 
looks  I  cast  in  its  direction,  —  and  whiqh  I 
find  gives  as  vivid  and  startling  a  picture  of 
high  life  as  one  could  reasonably  expect  for  a 
penny.  Should  I  fail  to  provide  myself  with 
one  of  these  popular  journals  at  the  book-stall, 
another  chance  is  generally  afforded  me  before 
the  train  moves  off ;  and  I  am  startled  out  of 
a  sleepy  reverie  by  a  small  boy's  thrusting  "  A 
Black  Business "  alarmingly  into  my  face, 
while  a  second  diminutive  lad  on  the  platform 
holds  out  to  me  enticingly  "  Fettered  for  Life," 
"Neranya's  Eevenge,"  and  "Ruby."  The 
last  has  on  the  cover  an  alluring  picture  of  a 
circus  girl  jumping  through  a  hoop,  which 
tempts  me  to  the  rashness  of  a  purchase,  circus 
riders  being  my  literary  weakness.  1  remem- 
ber, myself,  trying  to  write  a  story  about  one, 
when  I  was  fourteen,  and  experiencing  great 
difficulty  from  a  comprehensive  and  all-embra- 
cing ignorance  of  my  subject.  It  is  but  fair 
to  the  author  of  "  Ruby  "  to  say  that  he  was 
too  practiced  a  workman  to  be  disconcerted 
or  turned  from  his  course  by  any  such  trivial 
disadvantage. 

I  should  hardly  like  to  confess  how  many 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  211 

coins  of  the  realm  I  dissipated  before  learn- 
ing the  melancholy  truth,  that  the  seductive 
titles  and  cuts  which  form  the  tours  deforce 
of  penny  fiction  bear  but  a  feeble  affinity  to 
the  tales  themselves,  which  are  like  vials  of 
skimmed  milk,  labeled  absinthe,  but  warranted 
to  be  wholly  without  flavor.  Mr.  James  Payn, 
who  has  written  very  amusingly  about  the 
mysterious  weekly  journals  which  lie  "thick 
as  autumnal  leaves  that  strew  the  brooks  in  Val- 
lombrosa "  upon  the  counters  of  small,  dark 
shops,  "  in  the  company  of  cheap  tobacco, 
hardbake,  and,  at  the  proper  season,  valen- 
tines," laments  with  frank  asperity  that  he  can 
find  in  them  neither  dramatic  interest,  nor  even 
impropriety.  He  has  searched  them  patiently 
for  something  wrong,  and  his  quest  has  been 
wholly  unrewarded.  Mr.  Thomas  Wright,  in 
a  paper  published  some  years  ago  in  the  "  Nine- 
teenth Century,"  makes  a  similar  complaint. 
The  lovely  heroines  of  these  stories  are  u  virtu- 
ous even  to  insipidity,"  and  their  heroes  are  so 
blamably  blameless  as  to  be  absolutely  revolt- 
ing. Yet  it  has  been  my  fate  to  encounter 
some  very  pretty  villains  in  the  course  of  my 
penny  readings,  and  at  least  one  specimen  of 


212  POINTS  OF  VIEW, 

the  sinful  gilded  youth,  who  has  "  handsome 
blonde  hair  parted  in  the  middle,  a  discon- 
tented mustache,  a  pale  face  and  apathetic  ex- 
pression." This  scion  of  the  aristocracy,  I  am 
grieved  to  say,  keeps  beautiful  Jewesses  on 
board  his  sumptuous  yacht,  and  otherwise  mis- 
behaves himself  after  a  fashion  calculated  to 
make  his  relatives  and  well-wishers  more  dis- 
contented even  than  his  mustache.  He  has  a 
lovely  sister,  Alma,  with  whom,  we  are  assured, 
the  Prince  of  Wales  danced  three  times  in  one 
night,  "  and  was  also  heard  to  express  his  ad- 
miration of  her  looks  and  her  esprit  in  some 
very  emphatic  superlatives,  exciting  a  variety 
of  comment  and  criticism."  Naturally,  and  all 
the  more  naturally  because  the  fair  Alma  dis- 
creetly reserves  her  esprit  for  royal  ears  and 
royal  commendation,  and  is  exceedingly  chary 
of  revealing  any  of  it  to  interested  readers,  who 
are  fain  to  know  what  kind  of  conversation  the 
Prince  found  so  diverting.  From  the  speci- 
mens presented  to  our  consideration,  we  are 
forced  to  conclude  either  that  his  Highness  is 
easily  satisfied  in  the  matter  of  esprit,  or  that 
he  has  an  almost  superhuman  power  of  detect- 
ing it  when  hidden  from  ordinary  observation. 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  213 

The  wonderful  dullness  of  penny  fiction  is 
not  really  due  to  the  absence  of  incidents,  of 
vice,  or  even  of  dramatic  situations,  but  to  the 
placidity  with  which  these  incidents  or  situa- 
tions are  presented  and  received.  How  can 
we  reasonably  be  expected  to  excite  ourselves 
over  a  catastrophe  which  makes  little  or  no  im- 
pression on  the  people  most  deeply  concerned 
in  it  ?  When  Bonny  Adair  engages  herself, 
with  guileless  alacrity,  to  a  man  who  has  a  wife 
already,  the  circumstance  is  narrated  with  a 
coolness  which  hardly  allows  of  a  tremor.  The 
wife  herself  is  not  the  hidden,  mysterious, 
veiled  creature  with  whom  we  are  all  familiar  ; 
not  an  actress,  or  a  ballet  girl,  or  an  adven- 
turess ;  but  a  highly  respectable  young  lady, 
going  into  society,  and  drinking  tea  with  poor 
Bonny  at  afternoon  receptions.  This  would 
seem  like  a  startling  innovation,  but  as  nobody 
else  expresses  any  surprise  at  the  matter,  why 
should  we  ?  Bonny  herself,  it  is  explained, 
put  no  embarrassing  questions  to  her  suitor. 
"  She  was  only  a  simple  country  maid.  She 
knew  that  he  loved  her,  and  that  was  all  she 
cared  for."  Still,  to  drink  tea  amicably  with 
the  wife  of  her  pretendu  is  too  much  even  for 


214  POINTS   OF    VIEW. 

a  simple  country  maid  ;  and  when  Bonny  is 
formally  introduced  to  "  Mrs.  Alec  Doyle,"  she 
feels  it  time  to  withdraw  from  the  scene  and 
become  a  hospital  nurse,  until  a  convenient 
accident  in  the  hunting-field  removes  the  in- 
trusive spouse,  and  reestablishes  her  claim  to 
the  husband. 

The  same  well-bred  indifference  is  revealed 
in  a  more  sensational  story  called  "  Elfrida's 
Wooing,"  where  we  have  a  villainous  uncle 
foiled  in  his  base  plots  ;  a  father  supposed  to 
ba  drowned,  but  turning  up  just  at  the  critical 
moment ;  a  wicked  lover  baffled,  a  virtuous 
lover  rewarded.  This  sounds  promising,  but 
in  reality  everything  is  taken  with  such  won- 
derful calm  that  not  a  ripple  of  excitement 
breaks  over  the  smooth  surface  of  the  tale. 
There  is  even  an  abduction,  which  surely  can- 
not be  an  every-day  occurrence  in  English 
clerical  life,  —  I  do  not  remember  anything 
like  it  in  one  of  Trollope's  novels,  —  and  by 
mistake  the  wrong  girl,  the  vicar's  daughter,  is 
carried  off  by  the  rogues.  But  no  matron  of 
feudal  times  could  have  betrayed  less  annoy- 
ance at  the  incident  than  does  the  vicar's  wife. 
'  Rupert,"  she  remarks  placidly  to  her  son,  "  it 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  215 

is  your  place  to  go  and  look  for  your  sister." 
"  Where  shall  I  go  ?  "  is  the  brother's  languid 
query.  To  which  his  mother  retorts,  with  some 
f retfulness  :  "  How  can  I  tell  you  ?  If  I  knew, 
I  should  be  able  to  send  for  her  myself,"  —  a 
very  simple  and  a  very  sensible  way  of  stating 
the  case  ;  but  it  sounds  as  if  the  pet  dog,  rather 
than  the  only  daughter  of  the  family,  had  been 

spirited  suddenly  away.  -'" 

The  most  striking  instance,  however,  of  that 
repose  of  mien  which  stamps  the  caste  of 
penny-fiction  characters  I  found  in  a  delightful 
little  romance  entitled  "  Golden  Chains,"  where 
the  heroine  marries  the  villain  to  oblige  a 
friend,  and  is  rewarded  for  her  amiability  by 
being  imprisoned  in  a  ruined  castle,  situated 
vaguely  "on  a  lonely  hillside  looking  down 
upon  the  blue  Mediterranean."  Apparently, 
nothing  can  be  easier  than  to  dispose  of  super- 
fluous wives  in  this  particular  locality  of  Italy, 
for  no  impertinent  questions  are  asked  ;  and 
Ernestine,  proving  intractable,  is  left  by  her 
husband,  Captain  Beamish,  an  English  officer 
of  a  type  not  yet  elucidated  by  Eudyard  Kip- 
ling, to  starve  quietly  in  her  dungeon.  She  is 
prevented  from  fulfilling  this  agreeable  des- 


216  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

tiny  by  the  accidental  drowning  of  the  captain, 
and  the  accidental  arrival  of  her  lover,  —  the 
virtuous  hero, — who  is  traveling  providentially 
in  the  south  of  Europe,  and  who  has  a  taste  for 
exploring  ruins.  This  gentlemanly  instinct 
leads  to  the  discovery  of  his  beloved  in  a  coma- 
tose condition,  "  but  beautiful  still,"  though 
"  her  youthful  roundness  was  gone  forever." 
Surely  now,  the  reader  thinks,  there  will  be  a 
scene  of  transport,  of  fierce  wrath,  of  mingled 
agony  and  rapture.  Nothing  of  the  sort. 
Linden  merely  "  lifts  the  fair  head  upon  his 
arm,"  and  administers  a  dose  of  brandy.  Then, 
as  Ernestine's  eyes  open,  he  murmurs,  "  '  Dear- 
est, do  you  know  me  ? '  '  Yes,'  she  faintly 
answered.  'All  is  well,  Nessa.  You  have 
been  cruelly  used,  but  all  is  well.  You  are 
safe  with  me.  Tell  me,  dear  one,  you  are  glad 
to  see  me.' '' 

If  she  were  not  glad  to  see  him,  under  the 
circumstances,  it  would  indicate  an  extraordi- 
nary indifference,  not  so  much  to  love  as  to  life  ; 
and  the  modesty  which,  in  such  a  case,  could 
doubt  a  hearty  welcome  seems  like  an  exagger- 
ated emotion.  But  the  hero  of  penny  fiction 
is  the  least  arrogant  of  mortals.  He  worships 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  217 

from  afar,  and  expresses  his  affection  in  lan- 
guage which  at  times  is  almost  obsequious  in  its 
timidity.  He  is  never  passionate,  never  exult- 
ant, never  the  least  bit  foolish,  and  never  for 
a  single  moment  relapses  into  humanity.  Yet 
millions  of  people  believe  in  him,  love  him, 
cherish  him,  and  hail  his  weekly  reappearance 
with  sincere  and  unwearied  applause. 

The  Unknown  Public,  that  huge  body  of 
readers  who  meddle  not  with  Ruskin,  nor  with 
Browning,  nor  with  Herbert  Spencer,  who 
have  110  acquaintance  with  George  Eliot,  and 
to  whom  even  Thackeray  and  Scott  are  as  re- 
condite as  George  Meredith  and  Walter  Pater, 
has  been  an  object  of  interest  and  curiosity  to 
its  neighbor,  the  Known  Public,  ever  since 
Wilkie  Collins  formally  introduced  it  into  good 
society,  more  than  thirty  years  ago.  This  in- 
terest is  mingled  with  philanthropy,  and  is 
apt  to  be  a  little  didactic  in  the  expression  of 
its  regard.  Wilkie  Collins,  indeed,  after  the 
easy-going  fashion  of  his  generation,  was  con- 
tent to  take  the  Unknown  Public  as  he  found 
it,  and  to  wonder  vaguely  whether  the  same 
man  wrote  all  the  stories  that  were  so  fear- 
fully and  wonderfully  alike  :  "  a  combination 


218  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

of  fierce  melodrama  and  meek  domestic  senti- 
ment ;  short  dialogues  and  paragraphs  on  the 
French  pattern,  with  English  moral  reflections 
of  the  sort  that  occur  on  the  top  lines  of  chil- 
dren's copybooks ;  descriptions  and  conversa- 
tions for  the  beginning  of  the  number,  and  a 
'  strong  situation '  dragged  in  by  the  neck  and 
shoulders  for  the  end."  It  was  in  the  An- 
swers to  Correspondents,  however,  that  the  dis- 
tinguished novelist  confesses  he  took  the  keen- 
est delight,  —  in  the  punctilious  reader,  who 
is  anxious  to  know  the  correct  hour  at  which 
to  visit  a  newly  married  couple  ;  in  the  prac- 
tical reader,  who  asks  how  to  make  crumpets 
and  liquid  blacking ;  in  the  sentimental  reader, 
who  has  received  presents  from  a  gentleman  to 
whom  she  is  not  engaged,  and  desires  the  ed- 
itor's sanction  for  the  deed ;  in  the  timorous 
reader,  who  is  afraid  of  a  French  invasion  and 
of  dragonflies.  The  scraps  of  editorial  wisdom 
doled  out  to  these  benighted  beings  were,  in 
Wilkie  Collins's  opinion,  well  worth  the  jour- 
nal's modest  price.  He  was  rejoiced  to  know 
that  "  a  sensible  and  honorable  man  never 
flirts  himself,  and  ever  despises  flirts  of  the 
other  sex."  He  was  still  more  pleased  to  be 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  219 

told,  "  When  you  have  a  sad  trick  of  blushing, 
on  being  introduced  to  a  young  lady,  and  when 
you  want  to  correct  the  habit,  summon  to  your 
aid  a  serene  and  manly  confidence." 

Members  of  the  Known  Public  who  explore 
the  wilds  and  deeps  of  penny  fiction  to-day  are 
less  satisfied  with  what  they  see,  less  flippant 
in  their  methods  of  criticism,  and  less  disposed 
to  permit  mankind  to  be  amused  after  its  own 
dull  fashion.  "  Let  us  raise  the  tone  of  these 
popular  journals,"  is  their  cry,  "  and  we  shall 
soon  have  millions  of  readers  taking  rational 
delight  in  wholesome  literature.  Let  us  pub- 
lish good  stories  at  a  penny  apiece,  —  in  fact, 
it  is  our  plain  duty  to  do  so,  —  and  these  mil- 
lions of  readers  will,  with  grateful  hearts,  rise 
up  and  call  us  blessed."  To  which  Mr.  Payn 
responds  mirthfully  that  the  Unknown  Public 
is  every  whit  as  sure  of  what  it  wants  as  the 
Known  Public  that  aspires  to  teach  it,  and 
perhaps  even  a  little  surer.  "  The  Count  of 
Monte  Cristo,"  "  The  Wandering  Jew,"  "  Ivan- 
hoe,"  and  "  White  Lies "  were  all  offered  in 
turn  at  a  penny  apiece,  and  were  in  turn  re- 
jected. That  it  does  occasionally  accept  bet- 
ter fiction,  if  it  can  get  it  cheap,  we  have  the 


220  POINTS   OF  VIEW, 

word  of  Mr.  Wright,  who  claims  to  have  been 
for  years  a  member  of  this  mysterious  body, 
and  to  have  an  inner  knowledge  of  what  it 
likes  and  dislikes.  "  The  Woman  in  White," 
"  Lady  Audley's  Secret,"  and  "  It  is  Never 
Too  Late  to  Mend  "  are,  he  asserts,  familiar 
names  with  a  certain  stratum  of  the  Unknown 
Public  ;  "  Midshipman  Easy  "  is  an  old  friend, 
and  "  The  Pathfinder  "  and  "  The  Last  of  the 
Mohicans  "  enjoy  a  fitful  popularity.  But  its 
real  favorite,  its  admitted  pride  and  delight, 
is  Ouida.  The  "  genteel  young  ladies  of  the 
counter,"  and  their  hard-working  sisterhood 
of  dressmakers  and  milliners  and  lodging- 
house  keepers,  all  accept  Ouida  as  a  literary 
oracle.  "  They  quite  agree  with  herself  that 
she  is  a  woman  of  genius.  They  recognize 
in  her  the  embodiment  of  their  own  inex- 
pressible imaginings  of  aristocratic  people  and 
things.  They  believe  in  her  Byronic  charac- 
ters, arid  their  Arabian-Nights-like  wealth  and 
power ;  in  her  titanic  and  delightfully  wicked 
guardsmen ;  in  her  erratic  or  ferocious,  but  al- 
ways gorgeous  princes,  her  surpassingly  lovely, 
but  more  or  less  immoral  grand  dames,  and 
her  wonderful  Bohemians  of  both  sexes.  They 


H  A 


ENGLISH  KAIL  WAY  FICTION. 

believe,  too,  in  her  sheer  '  fine  writing.'  Its 
jingle  is  pleasant  to  their  senses,  even  though 
they  fail  to  catch  its  meaning.  Ouida's  work 
is  essentially  the  acme  of  penny-serial  style. 
The  novelists  of  the  penny  prints  toil  after  her 
in  vain,  but  they  do  toil  after  her.  They  aim 
at  the  same  gorgeousness  of  effect,  though  they 
lack  her  powers  to  produce  it,  to  impress  it 
vividly  upon  readers. ''^x*'* 

It  has  not  been  my  experience  to  find  in 
these  weeklies  —  and  I  have  read  many  of 
them  —  even  a  dim  reflection  of  Ouida's  mere- 
tricious glitter.  A  gentle  and  unobtrusive 
dullness ;  a  smooth  fluency  of  style,  suggestive 
of  the  author's  having  written  several  hundreds 
of  such  stories  before,  and  turning  them  out 
with  no  more  intellectual  effort  than  an  organ- 
grinder  uses  in  turning  the  crank  of  his  organ ; 
an  air  of  absolute  unreality  about  the  charac- 
ters, not  so  much  from  overdrawing  as  from 
their  deadly  sameness ;  conversations  of  vapid 
sprightliness  and  an  atmosphere  of  oppressive 
respectability,  —  these  are  the  characteristics 
of  penny  fiction,  if  I  may  judge  from  the  va- 
ried specimens  that  have  fallen  into  my  hands. 
The  foreign  scoundrels  and  secret  poisoners, 


222  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

the  sumptuous  wealth  and  lavish  bloodshed, 
that  thrilled  the  boyhood  of  Mr.  Wright  have, 
I  greatly  fear,  been  refined  out  of  existence. 
There  is  an  occasional  promise  of  this  sort  of 
thing,  but  never  any  adequate  fulfillment.  I 
once  hoped  much  from  the  opening  paragraph 
of  a  tale  describing  the  virtuous  heroine's 
wicked  husband  in  language  which  seemed  to 
me  full  of  bright  auspices  for  his  future  :  — 

"  The  speaker  was  a  fair,  well-dressed  man, 
in  appearance  about  three-and-thirty.  A  yel- 
low mustache  increased  the  languid,  insouciant 
expression  of  his  long,  well-cut  features,  which 
were  handsome,  but,  despite  their  delicacy, 
had  a  singular  animal  resemblance  in  them,  — 
God's  image  in  the  possession  of  a  cool,  un- 
principled fiend,  which  now  and  then  peered 
out  of  the  pale  blue  eyes,  half  veiled  by  the 
yellow  lashes." 

Yet,  with  all  his  advantages  of  physiognomj,^ 
the   utmost  this  pale-eyed  person  achieves  is 
to  hang  around  in  his  wife's  way  until  she 
shoots   him,  —  accidentally,  of  course,  —  and 
secures  herself  from  any  further  annoyance. 

In  a  taste  for  aristocracy,  however,  and  a 
splendid  contempt  for  trade,  and  "  the  city," 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  223 

and  the  objectionable  middle  classes,  our  penny 
novelist  surpasses  even  Ouida,  and  approaches 
more  nearly  to  that  enamored  exponent  of  high 
life,  Lord  Beaconsfield.  He  will  dance  his 
puppets,  as  Tony  Lumpkin's  boon  companion 
danced  his  bear,  "  only  to  the  very  genteelest 
of  tunes."  Mr.  Edward  Salmon,  who  has 
written  with  amazing  seriousness  on  "  What 
the  Working  Classes  Read,"  and  who  thinks 
it  a  pity  "  more  energy  is  not  exerted  in  bring- 
ing home  to  the  people  the  inherent  attractions 
of  Shakespeare,  Scott,  Marryat,  Dickens,  Lyt- 
ton,  and  George  Eliot,"  makes  the  distinct 
assertion  that  socialism  and  a  hatred  of  the 
fashionable  world  are  fostered  by  the  penny 
serials,  and  by  the  pictures  they  draw  of  a  lux- 
urious and  depraved  nobility.  "  The  stories," 
he  says  gravely,  u  are  utterly  contemptible  in 
literary  execution.  They  thrive  on  the  wicked 
baronet,  the  faithless  but  handsome  peeress, 
and  find  their  chief  supporters  among  shop- 
girls, seamstresses,  and  domestic  servants.  It 
is  hardly  surprising  that  there  should  exist  in 
the  impressionable  minds  of  the  masses  an 
aversion  more  or  less  deep  to  the  upper  classes. 
If  one  of  their  own  order,  man  or  woman,  ap- 


224  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

pears  in  the  pages  of  these  unwholesome  prints, 
it  is  only  as  a  paragon  of  virtue,  who  is  proba- 
bly ruined,  or  at  least  wronged,  by  that  incar- 
nation of  evil,  the  sensuous  aristocrat,  standing 
six  feet,  with  his  dark  eyes,  heavy  mustache, 
pearl-like  teeth,  and  black  hair.  Throughout 
the  story  the  keynote  struck  is  high  -  born 
scoundrelism.  Every  social  misdemeanor  is 
called  in  to  assist  the  progress  of  the  slipshod 
narrative.  Crime  and  love  are  the  essential 
ingredients,  and  the  influence  exercised  over 
the  feminine  reader,  often  unenlightened  by 
any  close  contact  with  the  classes  whom  the 
novelist  pretends  to  portray,  crystallizes  into 
an  irremovable  dislike  of  the  upper  strata  of 
society."  1 

It  is  hard,  after  reading  this  extract,  to  be- 
lieve that  Mr.  Salmon  ever  examined  any  of 
these  "  slipshod  narratives  "  for  himself,  or  he 
would  know  that  the  aristocrat  of  penny  fiction 
is  always  fair.  The  stalwart  young  farmer, 
the  aspiring  artist,  the  sailor  lover,  may  rival 
each  oxher  in  dark  clustering  curls,  but  the 
peer,  as  befits  his  rank,  is  monotonously 
blonde 

1  The  Nineteenth  Century. 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  225 

uThe  dark  was  dowered  with  beauty, 

The  fair  was  nobly  born. 
In  the  face  of  the  one  was  hatred ; 
In  the  face  of  the  other,  scorn." 

Mr.  Hamilton  Ai'de  probably  does  not  design 
liis  graceful  verses  as  illustrations  of  weekly 
novelettes,  but  he  understands  better  than  Mr. 
Salmon  the  subtle  sympathy  between  birth  and 
coloring. 

Neither  have  I  discovered  any  socialistic 
tendency  in  these  stories,  nor  any  disposition 
to  exalt  the  lower  orders  at  the  expense  of  the 
upper.  The  Clara  Vere  de  Veres  who  smiled 
on  me  in  the  course  of  my  researches  were  all 
as  virtuous  as  they  were  beautiful,  and  their 
noble  lovers  were  models  of  chivalry  and  truth. 
It  was  the  scheming  lawyer,  the  base-born, 
self-made  man  of  business,  who  crept  as  a  ser- 
pent into  their  patrician  Eden,  and  was  treated 
with  the  contempt  and  contumely  he  deserved. 
In  one  instance,  such  an  upstart,  Mr.  John 
Farlow  by  name,  ventures  to  urge  upon  an  im- 
poverished landholder  his  offers  of  friendship 
and  assistance,  and  this  is  the  spirit  in  which 
his  advances  are  received :  — 

"  The  colonel  shudders,  as  he  gazes,  half 
wearily,  half  scornfully,  at  the  shapeless,  squat 


226  POINTS  OF  VIEW. 

figure  of  the  Caliban-like  creature  before  him. 
That  he,  Courtenay  St.  Leger  Walterton,  late 
in  command  of  her  Majesty's  Lancers,  should 
have  to  listen  respectfully  to  the  hectoring  of 
this  low  city  rascal,  while  a  horsepond  awaits 
without,  and  a  collection  of  horsewhips  hang 
ready  for  instant  application  on  the  hunting- 
rack  in  the  hall  within !  Yet  it  is  so ;  he  is 
wholly  at  this  man's  mercy,  and  the  colonel, 
like  the  humblest  of  mankind,  is  obliged  to 
succumb  to  the  inevitable." 

Now,  since  I  turned  the  last  page  of  "  Ten 
Thousand  a  Year,"  a  long,  long  time  ago,  I 
have  hardly  met  with  a  finer  instance  of  aris- 
tocratic feeling  than  this,  or  a  more  crushing 
disdain  for  the  ignoble  creature  known  as  a 
solicitor.  Mr.  John  Farlow  is  of  course  a  vil- 
lain, but  Courtenay  St.  Leger  Walterton  is  not 
aware  of  this  fact,  and  neither,  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  tale,  is  the  reader.  What  we  do 
know,  however,  is  that,  being  a  "  low  city  ras- 
cal," he  naturally  merits  horsewhipping  at  the 
hands  of  a  blue-blooded  country  squire.  He 
would  have  deserved  hanging,  had  the  colonel 
been  a  duke,  and  perhaps  that  punishment 
might  have  been  meted  triumphantly  out  to 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  227 

him,  for  the  penny  novelist,  with  all  his  faults, 
still  "  loves  his  House  of  Peers." 

The  task  of  providing  literature  for  the  Un- 
known Public  is  not  the  easy  thing  it  seems  to 
critics  like  Mr.  Wright  and  Mr.  Salmon.  The 
Unknown  Public  has  its  literature  already,  — 
a  literature  which  enjoys  an  enormous  circu- 
lation, and  gives  absolute  satisfaction.  One 
publishing  company  alone,  "for  the  people," 
claims  that  its  penny  novelettes,  issued  weekly, 
reach  seven  millions  of  readers,  and  these 
seven  millions  are  evidently  content  with  what 
they  receive.  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  is  responsi- 
ble for  the  statement  that  a  story  about  a  mill 
girl,  which  was  printed  in  a  Glasgow  penny 
journal,  so  delighted  the  subscribers  that  they 
demanded  it  should  be  several  times  repeated 
in  its  columns.  "  There  could  not,"  says  Mr. 
Lang  somewhat  wistfully,  "  be  a  more  perfect 
and  gratifying  success  ; "  and  publishers  of 
ambitious  and  high-toned  periodicals  may  well 
be  forgiven  for  envying  such  a  master-stroke. 
When  were  they  ever  asked  to  reprint  a  story, 
however  vaunted  its  perfections,  however  pop- 
ular it  seemed  to  be  ?  The  heroine  of  this 
magic  tale  is  defrauded  of  her  inheritance  by 


228  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

villains  who  possess  sumptuous  subterranean 
palaces  and  torture-chambers  in  "  her  own  ro- 
mantic town  "  of  Glasgow,  the  last  place  in 
the  world  where  we  should  reasonably  expect 
to  find  them.  "The  one  essential  feature," 
Mr.  Lang  observes,  "  in  a  truly  successful 
tale  is  that  there  should  be  an  ingenue,  as  pure 
as  poor,  who  is  debarred  by  conspiracies  from 
the  enjoyment  of  a  prodigious  fortune."  This 
is  a  favorite  device  with  weekly  papers  at 
home,  and  the  serial  story,  on  either  side  of 
the  Atlantic,  is  perforce  a  little  more  stirring 
in  its  character  than  that  presented  to  us  in 
finished  form  through  the  medium  of  the 
penny  novelette.  With  the  first,  the  "  strong 
situation  "  is  serviceable  as  a  decoy  to  lure  the 
reader  into  purchasing  the  following  number. 
With  the  second,  no  such  artifice  is  needed  or 
employed.  The  buyer  has  his  pennyworth  al- 
ready in  hand  ;  and  a  very  good  pennyworth 
it  is,  judged  by  quantity  alone.  Wilkie  Col- 
lins tells  us  how  he  tried  vainly  to  extract  from 
a  shopman  an  opinion  as  to  which  was  the  best 
journal  to  select,  and  how  the  shopman  per- 
sisted, very  naturally,  in  saying  that  there  was 
no  choice,  —  one  was  every  bit  as  long  as 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  229 

another.  "  Well,  you  see  some  likes  one,  and 
some  the  next.  Take  'em  all  the  year  around, 
and  there  ain't  a  pin,  as  I  knows  of,  to  choose 
between  them.  There 's  just  about  as  much  in 
one  as  there  is  in  its  neighbor.  All  good 
penn'orths.  Bless  my  soul !  Just  take  'em  up 
and  look  for  yourself  !  All  good  penn'orths, 
choose  where  you  like." 

Exactly  as  if  they  were  shrimps  or  peri- 
winkles !  Very  good  measure,  if  you  chance 
to  like  the  stuff  !  "Dorothy,  a  Home  Journal 
for  Ladies,"  in  a  rather  attractive  pale  green 
cover,  gives  you  every  week  a  complete  story, 
nearly  half  the  length  of  an  average  English 
novel,  and  fairly  well  illustrated  with  full-page 
cuts.  Each  number  contains,  in  addition, 
Dorothy's  Letter-Box,  where  all  reasonable 
questions  are  answered,  and  Dorothy's  Draw- 
ing-Room, with  items  of  fashionable  news,  — 
the  whereabouts  of  the  Queen,  and  the  inter- 
esting fact  that  "the  Duke  and  Duchess  of 
Portland  have  been  living  quietly  and  giving 
no  parties  at  Langwell,  the  Duke  being  desir- 
ous of  affording  the  Duchess  every  chance  of 
better  regaining  her  health."  Also  Hints  for 
Practical  Dressmaking,  by  "  Busy  Bee ; " 


230  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

Our  Homes,  by  "  Lady  Bird  ;  "  an  occasional 
poem ;  and  Notes  on  Handwriting,  where  you 
may  learn  that  you  have  "  ambition,  an  ardent, 
tender,  affectionate,  and  sensitive  nature,  easily 
impressed,  and  inclined  to  jealousy.  There 
is  also  some  sense  of  beauty,  vivid  fancy,  and 
sequence  of  ideas."  Now  and  then  a  doubting 
maid  sends  a  scrap  of  her  lover's  penmanship 
to  be  deciphered,  and  receives  the  following 
gentle  encouragement :  — 

"  LOVE  LIES  BLEEDING.  —  I  hardly  like  to 
say  whether  the  writer  of  the  morsel  you  in- 
close would  make  a  good  husband  ;  but  I 
should  imagine  him  as  thoughtful  for  others, 
romantic  and  loving,  very  orderly  in  his  habits, 
and  fairly  well  educated  ;  rather  hot-tempered, 
but  forgives  and  forgets  quickly." 

All  this  for  a  penny,  —  two  cents  of  Ameri- 
can money  !  No  wonder  "  Dorothy  "  reaches 
her  millions  of  readers.  No  wonder  the  little 
green  books  lie  in  great  heaps  on  the  counters 
of  every  railway  station  in  England.  She  is, 
perhaps,  the  most  high-toned  of  such  weekly 
issues ;  but  "  The  Princess,"  in  a  bright  blue 
cover,  follows  closely  in  her  wake,  with  a  com- 
plete story,  illustrated,  and  Boudoir  Gossip 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  231 

about  Prince  George  of  Wales,  and  Mrs. 
Mackay,  and  the  Earl  and  Countess  of  Jersey. 
"  Bow  Bells  "  and  "  The  Wide  World  Novel- 
ettes "  are  on  a  distinctly  lower  scale  :  the  fic- 
tion more  sensational,  the  cuts  coarser,  and  the 
pink  cover  of  "  Bow  Bells  "  flaunting  and  vul- 
gar. "  A  Magazine  of  Short  Stories  "  aims  at 
being  lively  and  vivacious  in  the  style  of  Rhoda 
Broughton,  and  gives  a  good  pennyworth  of 
tales,  verses,  Answers  to  Correspondents,  and 
a  column  of  Familiar  Quotations  Verified  that 
alone  is  worth  the  money.  But  the  final 
triumph  of  quantity  over  quality,  of  matter 
over  mind,  is  in  the  "  Book  for  All,"  published 
weekly  at  the  price  of  one  penny,  and  contain- 
ing five  separate  departments,  for  women,  girls, 
men,  boys,  and  children.  Each  of  these  depart- 
ments has  a  short  illustrated  story,  poetry, 
anecdotes,  puzzles,  confidential  talks  with  the 
editor,  advice  on  every  subject,  and  informa- 
tion of  every  description.  Here  you  can  learn 
"how  to  preserve  your  beauty"  and  how  to 
make  "  royal  Battenberg  "  lace,  how  to  run  a 
Texas  ranch  and  how  to  go  into  mourning  for 
your  mother,  how  to  cure  stammering  and  how 
to  rid  a  dog  of  fleas.  Here  you  may  acquire 


232  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

knowledge  upon  the  most  varied  topics,  from 
lung  diseases  in  animals  to  Catherine  of  Rus- 
sia's watch,  from  the  aborigines  of  Australia 
to  scientific  notes  on  the  Lithuanian  language. 
The  Unknown  Public  must  indeed  be  athirst 
for  knowledge,  if  it  can  absorb  such  quantities 
week  after  week  with  unabated  zeal  ;  and, 
from  the  Answers  to  Correspondents,  we  are 
led  to  suppose  it  is  ever  eager  for  more.  One 
inquiring  mind  is  comforted  by  the  assurance 
that  "  narrative  monophone  will  appear  in  its 
turn,"  and  an  ambitious  but  elderly  reader  is 
gently  warned  that  "  a  person  aged  fifty  might 
learn  to  play  on  the  guitar,  and  perhaps  be 
able  to  sing  ;  but  the  chances  are  that,  in  both 
instances,  the  performance  will  not  be  likely 
to  captivate  those  who  are  compelled  to  listen 
to  it."  On  the  whole,  after  an  exhaustive 
study  of  penny  weeklies,  I  should  say  that, 
were  I  expected  to  provide  a  large  family  with 
reading  matter  and  encyclopaedic  information 
at  the  modest  rate  of  one  dollar  and  four 
cents  a  year,  the  "  Book  for  All "  would  be 
the  journal  of  my  choice. 

It  is  not  in  penny  fiction    alone,  however, 
that  the  railway  book-stalls  do  a  thriving  trade. 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  233 

The  shilling  novels  stand  in  goodly  rows,  in- 
viting you  to  a  purchase  you  are  sure  after- 
wards to  regret.  The  average  shilling  novel 
in  England  differs  from  the  average  penny 
novel  in  size  only ;  and,  judged  by  measure- 
ment, the  sole  standard  it  is  possible  to  apply, 
it  should,  to  warrant  its  price,  be  about  six 
times  the  length.  "  Lord  Elwyn's  Daughter  " 
and  "The  Nun's  Curse,"  at  a  shilling  each, 
bear  such  a  strong  family  resemblance  to  their 
penny  cousins,  "  Golden  Chains  "  and  "  Her 
Bitter  Burden,"  that  it  needs  their  outward 
dress  to  distinguish  them;  and  "Haunted" 
and  "  The  Man  who  Vanished  "  carry  their  fin- 
est thrills  in  their  title.  Quite  early  in  my 
search,  I  noticed  at  the  Waterloo  station  three 
shilling  novels,  —  "  Weaker  than  Woman," 
"Lady  Button's  Ward,"  and  "Diana's  Dis- 
cipline," all  advertised  conspicuously  as  being 
by  the  author  of  "  Dora  Thorne."  Feeling 
that  my  ignorance  of  Dora  Thorne  herself 
was  a  matter  for  regret  and  enlightenment,  I 
asked  for  her  at  once,  to  be  told  she  was  not 
in  stock,  but  I  might,  if  I  liked,  have  "  Lady 
Gwendolen's  Dream,"  by  the  same  writer.  I 
declined  "  Lady  Gwendolen,"  and  at  the  next 


234  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

station  once  more  demanded  "  Dora  Thome." 
In  vain !  The  young  man  in  attendance  glanced 
over  his  volumes,  shook  his  head,  and  offered 
me  "Diana's  Discipline,"  and  a  fresh  book 
"The  Fatal  Lilies,"  also  by  the  author  of 
"  Dora  Thorne."  Another  stall  at  another 
station  had  all  five  of  these  novels,  and  a  sixth 
one  in  addition,  "  A  Golden  Heart,"  by  the 
author  of  "Dora  Thorne,"  but  still  no  "Dora." 
Elsewhere  I  encountered  "  Her  Martyrdom  " 
and  "  Which  Loved  Him  Best,"  both  stamped 
with  the  cabalistic  words  "  By  the  Author  of 
'  Dora  Thorne ' ;  "  and  so  it  continued  to  the 
end.  New  stories  without  number,  all  from 
the  same  pen,  and  all  countersigned  "By  the 
Author  of  fc  Dora  Thorne,' "  but  never  "Dora." 
From  first  to  last,  she  remained  elusive,  invisi- 
ble, unattainable,  —  a  Mrs.  Harris  among 
books,  a  name  and  nothing  more. 

Comedy  is  very  popular  at  railway  book- 
stalls :  "  My  Churchwardens,"  by  a  Vicar,  and 
"My  Eectors,"  by  a  Quondam  Curate;  a 
weekly  pennyworth  of  mild  jokes  called  "  Pick- 
Me-Up,"  and  a  still  cheaper  and  still  milder 
collection  for  a  half-penny  called  "  Funny 
Cuts  ;  "  an  occasional  shabby  copy  of  "  Inno- 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  235 

cents  Abroad,"  which  stands  as  the  representa- 
tive of  American  humor,  and  that  most  mysteri- 
ous of  journals,  "Ally  Sloper's  Half  Holiday," 
which  always  conveys  the  impression  of  being 
exceedingly  amusing  if  one  could  only  under- 
stand the  fun.  Everybody  —  I  mean,  of 
course,  everybody  who  rides  in  third-class  car- 
riages —  buys  this  paper,  and  studies  it  so- 
berly, industriously,  almost  sadly ;  but  I  have 
never  yet  seen  anybody  laugh  over  it.  Mrs. 
Pennell,  indeed,  with  a  most  heroic  devotion 
to  the  cause  of  humor,  and  a  catholic  apprecia- 
tion of  its  highways  and  byways,  has  analyzed 
Ally  Sloper  for  the  benefit  of  the  Known 
Public  which  reads  the  "Contemporary  Re- 
view," and  claims  that  he  is  a  modern  brother 
of  old-time  jesters,  —  of  Pierrot,  and  Pulci- 
nello,  and  Pantaleone ;  reflecting  national 
vices  and  follies  with  caustic  but  good-natured 
fidelity.  "  While  the  cultured  of  the  present 
generation  have  been  busy  proving  their  pow- 
ers of  imitation,"  says  Mrs.  Pennell,  "this 
unconscious  evolution  of  a  popular  type  has 
established  the  pretensions  of  the  people  to 
originality."  But,  alas !  it  is  not  given  to  the 
moderately  cultivated  to  understand  such  types 


236  POINTS  OF   VIEW. 

without  a  good  deal  of  interpretation;  and 
merely  buying  and  reading  the  paper  are  of 
very  little  service.  Here  are  the  pictures, 
which  I  am  told  are  clever ;  here  is  the  text, 
which  is  probably  clever,  too ;  but  their  com- 
bined brilliancy  conveys  no  light  to  my  mind. 
Ally  Sloper  leading  "a  local  German  band  "  at 
Tenby,  Ally  Sloper  interviewing  distinguished 
people,  may,  like  Mr.  F.'s  aunt,  be  "  ingenious 
and  even  subtle,"  but  the  key  to  his  subtlety 
is  lacking.  As  for  Tootsie,  and  The  Dook 
Snook,  and  Lord  Bob,  and  The  Hon.  Billy,  and 
all  the  other  members  of  this  interesting  fam- 
ily who  play  their  weekly  part  in  the  recurring 
comedy,  they  would  be  quite  as  amusing  to  the 
uninitiated  reader  if  they  followed  the  example 
of  the  erudite  Oxonian,  and  conversed  in  "  the 
Ostiak  dialect  of  Tungusian." 

By  way  of  contrast,  I  suppose,  the  other 
comic  weeklies  preserve  a  simplicity  of  charac- 
ter which  is  equaled  only  by  their  placid  and 
soothing  dullness.  It  is  easy  to  understand 
the  amount  of  humor  conveyed  in  such  jests 
as  these,  both  of  which  are  deemed  worthy  of 
half-page  illustrations. 

"  Aunt  Kate  (in  the  park).  Tell  me,  Ethel, 
when  any  of  the  men  look  at  me. 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  237 

"  Little  Ethel.  It 's  me  they  look  at,  aunty. 
You  're  too  old." 

"  Dear  friends  again.  Madge  (rather  eld- 
erly). What  do  you  think  of  my  new  hat, 
Lily? 

"  Lily.  It 's  rather  old-fashioned,  dear,  but 
it  suits  you." 

This  is  the  very  meekest  of  funning,  and 
feminine  tartness  and  juvenile  precocity  must 
be  at  a  low  ebb  with  the  Unknown  Public  when 
it  can  relish  such  shadowy  thrusts,  even  at  in- 
creasing years,  which,  from  the  days  of  the 
prophet  to  the  days  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  have 
ever  been  esteemed  a  fitting  subject  for  mirth. 
The  distance  between  the  penny  dreadful  and 
"  Lorna  Doone  "  is  not  vaster  than  the  dis- 
tance between  these  hopeless  jests  and  the  fine 
cynicism,  the  arrowy  humor,  of  Du  Maurier. 
Mrs.  Pennell  says  very  truely  that  Cimabue 
Brown  and  Mrs.  Ponsonby  de  Tomkyns  would 
have  no  meaning  whatever  for  the  British 
workman,  —  would  probably  be  as  great  a  mys- 
tery to  him  as  The  Dook  Snook  and  The  Hon. 
Billy  are  to  me.  But  Punch's  dear  little  lad 
who,  on  a  holiday  afternoon,  has  caught  only 
one  fish,  "  and  that  was  so  young  it  (lid  n't 


238  POINTS   OF   VIEW. 

know  how  to  hold  on,"  and  the  charitable  but 
near-sighted  old  lady  who  drops  a  penny  into 
the  hat  of  a  meditative  peer,  come  within  the 
scope  of  everybody's  comprehension.  If  more 
energy  is  to  be  exerted  "  in  bringing  home  to 
the  people  the  inherent  attractions  of  Shake- 
speare, Scott,  Marryat,  Dickens,  Lytton,  and 
George  Eliot,"  according  to  the  comprehensive 
programme  laid  out  by  Mr.  Salmon,  why  not, 
as  a  first  step,  bring  home  to  them  the  attrac- 
tions of  a  bright,  clean,  merry  jest  ?  It  might 
enable  them,  perhaps,  to  recognize  the  gap 
between  the  humor  of  George  Eliot  and  the 
humor  of  Captain  Marryat,  and  would  serve 
to  prick  their  dormant  critical  faculties  into 
life. 

The  one  sad  sight  at  an  English  railway 
book-stall  is  the  little  array  of  solid  writers 
who  stand  neglected,  shabby,  and  apart,  plead- 
ing dumbly  out  of  their  dusty  shame  for  rec- 
ognition and  release.  I  have  seen  Baxter's 
"  Saint's  Kest "  jostled  contemptuously  into  a 
corner.  I  have  seen  "  The  Apostolic  Fathers  " 
hanging  their  hoary  heads  with  dignified  hu- 
mility, and  "  The  Popes  of  Rome  "  lingering 
in  inglorious  bondage.  I  have  seen  our  own 


ENGLISH  RAILWAY  FICTION.  239 

Emerson  broken -backed  and  spiritless;  and, 
harder  still,  "  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast- 
Table  "  shorn  of  his  gay  supremacy,  frayed, 
and  worn,  and  exiled  from  his  friends.  I  have 
seen  "  Sartor  Resartus"  skulking  on  a  dark 
shelf  with  a  yellow -covered  neighbor  more 
gaudy  than  respectable,  and  I  have  seen 
Buckle's  boasted  "  Civilization  "  in  a  condition 
that  would  have  disgraced  a  savage.  These 
Titans,  discrowned  and  discredited,  these  cap- 
tives, honorable  in  their  rags,  stirred  my  heart 
with  sympathy  and  compassion.  I  wanted  to 
gather  them  up  and  carry  them  away  to  re- 
spectability, and  the  long-forgotten  shelter  of 
library  walls.  But  light-weight  luggage  pre- 
cluded philanthropy,  and,  steeling  my  reluc- 
tant soul,  I  left  them  to  their  fate.  Still  they 
stand,  I  know,  unsought,  neglected,  scorned, 
while  thousands  of  "  Dorothys "  and  "  Ally 
Slopers  "  are  daily  sold  around  them.  "  How 
had  the  star  of  this  daughter  of  Gomer  waxed, 
while  the  star  of  these  Cymry,  his  sons,  had 
waned!"  How  shall  genius  be  revered  and 
honored,  when  buried  without  decent  rites  in 
the  bleak  graveyard  of  a  railway  book-stall? 


u.c. 


